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Virgin Australia has rolled out a new “journey tracker” feature for passengers as it prepares for the busy holiday season.
Making use of iOS live activities and Android custom notifications, the tool, launched on Wednesday, provides real-time updates to flight status from the lock screen as well as instant boarding pass access and “seamless integration” with the Virgin Australia app.
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“Journey Tracker is about making travel as simple and predictable as possible. With live updates and boarding pass access from the lock screen, guests can focus on enjoying their journey rather than worrying about logistics,” said Virgin Australia’s general manager digital, Alex Plummer.
Virgin says it is the first Australian airline to use this technology, which has been made available first to its domestic passengers and follows the completed rollout of its bag tracking functionality in January this year.
The news comes as Virgin expects to fly nearly 500,000 seats per week across its domestic and short-haul international networks in the December–January holiday period, or up to 3,000 weekly flights.
The carrier has increased its domestic capacity by 3 per cent year-on-year in the peak period from 16 December 2024 to 12 January 2025, and around five per cent over pre-COVID-19 levels; popular holiday destinations such as the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Cairns, Tasmania, the Whitsundays, Hamilton Island, and Byron Bay will see extra services.
According to Virgin, it saw “record-breaking” passenger numbers in October and November, flying more than 4 million passengers across the two months.
“Contributing to this record performance is the more than 130,000 Rex passengers who have been booked on Virgin Australia services free-of-charge since Rex suspended its jet operations in July. Of these passengers, approximately 16,000 are anticipated to fly in December and January,” the airline said.
“While managing consistently high passenger loads, Virgin Australia has maintained an industry-leading completion rate with 98.3 per cent of scheduled flights in November completed.”
Virgin is looking to increase its operational resilience for the holidays, hiring an additional 90 guest services and 175 pit crew team members this year, as well as bolstering Guest Assistance Team staff, changing its heavy maintenance schedule to free up spare aircraft including two former Rex 737-800s, and bringing in new ground services equipment.
