Most of them were buried on the finance pages, but the changes Virgin Blue announced last week amount to the biggest developments in Australia flying since the demise of Ansett nearly a decade ago.
If there were still any doubts, Virgin Blue is about to complete its transformation from cheap and cheerful low-cost carrier to a serious business and leisure airline that has low costs.
Virgin Blue will soon begin acquiring 300-seat Airbus A330:200s like Qantass to enable it to move people en masse in the morning and evening peak periods on the Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane corridor, but also to provide faster and more comfortable flights across the Nullabor to Perth.
Theres more to come, as VB hasnt yet announced details of how the revamped cabins inside its jets will look with discrete business class cabins for the first time.
An even bigger development for europhiles is a partnership with new Middle East carrier Etihad to enable the airline to offer one-stop connections to 12 European cities on top of its existing services from Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne to Los Angeles with V Australia.
This isnt just a codeshare deal as V Australia will fly its own Boeing 361-seat Boeing 777:300s to Etihads hub in Abu Dhabi, after axing its three loss-making services a week from Melbourne to Johannesburg.
(V Australia will also axe its flights from Melbourne and Brisbane to Phuket next February, but Pacific Blue will retain its three weekly Perth-Phuket 737 services, connecting with flights from the east coast.)
Three V Australia flights a week from Sydney to Abu Dhabi will take the total Etihad offering to double daily while V Australia will add three flights a week to Ehithads three from Brisbane in 2012.
Etihad also runs daily non-stop services from Melbourne to Abu Dhabi.
Rather than fighting the Middle East carriers, as Qantas is doing, Virgin Blue has decided to join them. In fact, Qantas has severed the codeshare relationship it had with Etihad as a result of the Virgin Blue deal, while Virgin Blue has also severed its codeshare relationship with Emirates, a fierce rival of Etihad which operates from Dubai, just 115 kilometres from Abu Dhabi.
The result is that Qantas flies its planes to only two European destinations (London and Frankfurt) while Virgin Blue flyers will have a choice of 12 one-stop European cities via the Etihad deal, as well as a myriad of other codeshare destinations.
Virgin Blue and Etihad will also share frequent flyer benefits, an extra carrot for business travellers in particular as it gives the Australian airline truly global reach to match Qantass massive frequent flyer program.
