Virgin Atlantic to stop Sydney, Hong Kong service

Virgin Atlantic has today announced its intention to withdraw operations between Sydney and Hong Kong from 5 May 2014.

Increasing costs and a challenging economic environment has affected revenues and the route is no longer considered profitable. Virgin Atlantic will continue to operate a normal daily service between Hong Kong and London Heathrow.

Virgin Atlantic regrets that this decision will affect some staff based in Sydney and Hong Kong. A consultation period has commenced with all employees likely to be affected.

Craig Kreeger, Chief Executive at Virgin Atlantic said, “We intend to withdraw our services between Hong Kong and Sydney. Despite the best efforts of our employees, external factors such as increasing costs and a weakening Australian dollar have affected our profitability.”

“These are still difficult times for the airline industry and as part of our strategy to operate more efficiently we need to deploy our aircraft onto routes with the right level of demand to be financially viable.”

It is Virgin Atlantic’s intention that the last flight departing Sydney to Hong Kong will be on 5 May 2014 and the last flight departing Hong Kong to Sydney will be on 4 May 2014. Up to that date, Virgin Atlantic will continue to operate its published schedule and customers can be confident booking flights for travel prior to then.

Options for affected passengers

We are in discussions with airlines in regards to reprotecting ticketed passengers affected by the intended withdrawal. Currently, we have the following agreement in place with Cathay Pacific:

Ticketed passengers travelling between Sydney and Hong Kong and who are affected by the intended withdrawal may be reprotected using the following booking classes:

If there is no availability or the above options are not suitable, a full refund may be offered for unused sectors.

Please ensure you update the SI field with the following information:

SI VS INVOL REROUTE FLIGHT NUMBER/TRAVEL DATE
Or

SI VS INVOL CANX FULL REFUND REQUIRED FLIGHT NUMBER/TRAVEL DATE
Travel between Hong Kong and London Heathrow remains unaffected and will be operated by Virgin Atlantic.

We will provide ongoing communication as we negotiate agreements with additional airlines to reprotect passengers travelling both between Hong Kong and Sydney as well as further afield.

Sourced: Etravelblockboardasia