Virgin Blue cutting flights and jobs

www.virginblue.com.au

Virgin Blue has revealed that it will remove five of its Boeing 737s from service and will revise its Australian domestic schedule from 7 May.

A spokesperson for the airline said that the reduction in capacity was the equivalent of 28 flights each day, from its schedule of more than 330 daily domestic services.

All revisions to the carrier’s domestic schedule will be effective from 7 May 2009, and are reflected on virginblue.comau. The schedule revisions appearing on the website be updated in global GDS and travel agent systems in the next few days.

Virgin Blue stressed that it was not withdrawing from any of its markets and had made a thorough review of data to determine which of the highest-frequency routes had traffic flows that could best handle this temporary capacity consolidation.

According to the carrier, the reductions constitute a move to adjust interim capacity based on the continued and forecast decline in demand for domestic air travel.

The 737s will act as operational spares and will not be redeployed into regularly-scheduled service for a minimum of 12 months.

It is anticipated that the reduction in capacity will affect as many as 400 full-time equivalent jobs at the airline.

www.virginblue.com.au