Virgin Australia has operated its final Melbourne-Los Angeles flight and commenced daily Brisbane-Los Angeles service as the airline consolidates its Boeing 777-300ER operations at two local hubs.
The last flight to depart Melbourne for Los Angeles was VA23 operated by VH-VOZ – the first 777 to enter Virgin’s fleet – which took off from Tullamarine on Saturday October 25 at 1222 local time.
It landed at Los Angeles 13 hours and 34 minutes later at 0756 local time. There was no return service to Melbourne.
The end of Virgin’s three times a week Melbourne-Los Angeles service means the airline will operate its fleet of five 777s from Sydney to Los Angeles and Abu Dhabi and from Brisbane to Los Angeles.
Virgin’s withdrawal on the Melbourne to Los Angeles route comes as Tullamarine gets set to welcome the first United Boeing 787-9 direct service at about 0800 Tuesday. UA98, operated by United’s 787-9 registration N38950, was due to depart Los Angeles on Sunday night local time.
Qantas was also adding extra flights between the Victorian capital and Los Angeles, boosting its daily service to 10 times weekly from December 17.
In further comings and goings at Melbourne, Tullamarine bade farewell to Singapore Airline’s daily Airbus A380 service on Sunday. As previously announced, SIA will switch one of its four daily flights from Melbourne to Singapore from the double-decker superjumbo to a Boeing 777-300ER.
However, SIA said recently the A380 will return to Melbourne in September 2015.
Meanwhile, SIA’s first A380 flight to Auckland was scheduled to depart Singapore 2050 local time as SQ285 on Monday.
