iscover
Virgin Australia’s first Embraer E190-E2 has arrived at its new home in Perth after a marathon ferry flight from Brazil, with the potential to expand the airline’s regional services beyond WA.
VH-E2A “Coral Bay”, which will begin revenue flights for Virgin Australia Regional Airlines (VARA) in October, was greeted by water cannons as it touched down in Perth on Monday following its trip from Embraer’s factory in São José dos Campos, via Texas, Los Angeles, Hawaii, Fiji and Canberra.
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
“The E190-E2 is a game-changer – it is more fuel-efficient, quieter, and more comfortable than anything else operating in the state’s charter market today. It will significantly improve the travel experience for our charter clients and give us greater flexibility across VARA’s operations,” said Nick Rohrlach, group executive, Virgin Australia Regional Airlines.
“When it enters service next month, this aircraft will fly charter routes and also support commercial services primarily within Western Australia to destinations like Darwin, Kalgoorlie, Karratha, Port Hedland and Broome. As we build scale with the E2 fleet over time, we will be able to explore expanding its use across our national network.
“The E190-E2 is 30 per cent more fuel-efficient than our retiring Fokker 100s and has the lowest noise profile of any aircraft in its segment. It is also future-ready, certified for up to 50 per cent Sustainable Aviation Fuel and capable of operating on 100 per cent SAF.”
At a press conference in Perth, Rohrlach hinted that the second-generation E-Jet could potentially open up routes in the eastern states.
“We’ve got eight of these aircraft coming starting today, and the first few will be used in the mining world and across intra-WA services,” he said.
“But beyond that, we really do hope to see new routes opened up for this. We just flew in from Canberra today, but there’s so many other markets that could be opened up with this aircraft, and so we do hope this is just the beginning.”
Speaking to Australian Aviation on the ferry flight from Canberra, VARA executive general manager Nathan Miller also noted that the E2 could “theoretically” be deployed on short-haul international routes, but only in “a very unique circumstance”.
“I’ve had a few people ask me, you know, would we operate this to Bali, for example? The reality is that in that market, this is probably not the right aircraft to service that – I think that there are better aircraft, like our 737-800s and MAX 8s, that would better suit that market,” he said.
“If you look at it more along the lines of what Scoot are doing, if there’s a niche opportunity where a long, thin route with only would service 100 people, that might very well be the sort of thing that we look at.
“I’d emphasise, however, that at this point in time, we’ve got a lot of stuff to do before we can start thinking about that.”
VARA will use the E2s to completely replace its Fokker 100 fleet, which averages around 30 years of age. The last Fokker is slated to leave service in December.
