iscover
Virgin Australia has said its “disciplined” approach was a key factor in its earnings jumping by a fifth to $519 million during the last full financial year.
In a statement released on Monday outlining its results, the airline also revealed its Velocity Frequent Flyer revenue lifted by almost a quarter but significantly didn’t reveal details of its overall profit, despite previously announcing a gain of $236 million for the first half of FY24.
This content is available exclusively to Australian Aviation members.
A monthly membership is only $5.99 or save with our annual plans.
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Unlimited access to all Australian Aviation digital content
- Access to the Australian Aviation app
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Access to our Behind the Lens photo galleries and other exclusive content
- Daily news updates via our email bulletin
- Unlimited access to all Australian Aviation digital content
- Access to the Australian Aviation app
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Access to our Behind the Lens photo galleries and other exclusive content
- Daily news updates via our email bulletin
It comes after Virgin Australia recorded 11 straight years of huge losses that led it to collapse into administration in 2020. However, it emerged with a new owner, Bain Capital, and adopted a stripped-back strategy of operating mostly domestic routes with a slimmed-down fleet of Boeing 737 aircraft.
“This is our second consecutive year of after-tax profit following the FY23 milestone of returning the business to profitability for the first time in 11 years,” said the airline’s outgoing CEO, Jayne Hrdlicka.
“This strong performance demonstrates the ongoing success of our transformation journey, despite what has been a challenging year for our industry.”
Virgin added that its positive set of results was achieved despite issues including supply chain constraints, “unprecedented” industry inflation and strong competition.
“The ongoing transformation agenda, now in its fourth year, has been critical to Virgin Australia’s return to profitability with continued strong contribution during FY24,” said the airline.
“Key areas of transformation focus include revenue management and ancillary revenue, digital channels, fleet reconfiguration, operations productivity and ongoing cost reduction.
“Velocity strategy execution delivered growth in the number of partners and products that earn points and the number of engaged members as well as program cost efficiency.
“In FY24, the airline continued to invest in new, more fuel-efficient aircraft and first-to-market customer innovations.
“This included baggage tracking across the domestic and international network and a self-service disruption management tool called Rapid Rebook. Over 500,000 customers have already taken advantage of this self-service rebooking functionality.”
Finally, Virgin declared it would gift staff 54,000 Velocity Points each as a thank you, on top of its existing $1,000 staff travel credit.
The news comes shortly after Virgin revealed Qatar Airways would buy a 25 per cent stake in the airline, a deal that would see it wet leasing planes from the overseas carrier to fly to Doha.
The move will also enable deeper ties between Virgin’s Velocity Frequent Flyer and Qatar Airways’ Privilege Club loyalty programs, as well as expanded codesharing agreements and the ability to better co-ordinate scheduling and networks between the two airlines.
