Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia have announced the expansion of their new codeshare agreement, creating more travel options between the UK and Australia.
The joint Virgin codeshare provides significant customer benefits – encompassing all the destinations they want to travel to in one booking with a single check in and bag drop.
From today, travellers who book through Virgin Atlantic will be able to buy tickets directly to Sydney, connecting via Hong Kong, onto Virgin Australia services.
The new codeshare is available on flights departing from July.
The new Sydney service is in addition to the Melbourne flights, whose codeshare services launched earlier this year.
Customers travelling through LA are already able to fly directly to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane as part of the codeshare.
The deal will also open up more domestic options across Australia – enabling customers to easily connect to or from cities and tourist destinations including Cairns, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide, Hobart and the Gold Coast, operated by Virgin Australia.
Shai Weiss, chief commercial officer at Virgin Atlantic, commented: “We are pleased to announce the expansion of our partnership with Virgin Australia which means even more customers can travel around the world using only Virgin airlines.
“The new deal will create more travel options between the UK and Australia by giving customers the choice of connecting through Los Angeles or Hong Kong to Sydney, Melbourne and beyond.
“It also offers customers the security and ease of booking through a codeshare, as well as through check-in and a single bag drop for the entire journey.
“We’re looking forward to welcoming our Australian customers back on board and couldn’t think of a more fitting way to do it than with our sister airline.”
Virgin Atlantic offers up to three daily flights between London Heathrow to Los Angeles with a further one daily to Hong Kong, creating the most flexible travel offerings to Australia than ever before.
Both routes are operated by a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, the newest aircraft in its fleet.
Group Executive of Virgin Australia Airlines, Rob Sharp, said that guests should look forward to a seamless travel experience when flying between the two countries.
“Virgin Australia is always looking for opportunities to provide more options to our customers and to improve the end-to-end travel experience.
“We are thrilled to be working with Virgin Atlantic to provide travellers with our renowned Virgin service and product all the way between Australia and the UK,” he said.
Virgin Australia operates up to 18 flights per week between Australia and Los Angeles on its Boeing 777-300ER fleet.
It also offers daily services between Melbourne and Hong Kong and will be launching daily flights between Sydney and Hong Kong on July 2nd using its A330-200 aircraft.