September 2010 Archives

AirAsia X has no qualms using bloodless prose when it comes to the Malaysian government blocking the carrier's application to fly to Sydney and other key routes, which the government interprets as a threat to AirAsia X competitor and national carrier Malaysia Airlines. "Minister of Transport says public will welcome having choice between LCC and full service airlines, will government really allow choice on routes?" AirAsia X chief executive Azran Osman-Rani Tweeted last month.
Here's one last photo of XXG, this one showing the A330's name:

In this installment of quirky news, the queen of daytime TV in America may have given away cars to her audience, but for the start of her 25th and final season, Oprah Winfrey teamed up with Qantas to fly "over 300 of Oprah's most loyal viewers" to Australia in December for an eight-day, all expenses paid trip, Qantas says.

It is easy to be ingratiated by the news with Oprah's proclamation, "We're going to Australia! We are going to Australia! You and you and you and you, are going to Australia!"

The announcement however shows just how high the stakes are between Qantas and V Australia to promote their trans-Pacific services. With this announcement, Qantas has now overtaken the high-rolling junket title from V Australia, who announced last week it would fly 180 travel agents from America to Hamilton Island for the Corroboree 2010 trade event. The agents are due to fly V Australia across the Pacific and then take a specially chartered 737 to Hamilton Island.

For added dramatic effect, Oprah's announcement was accompanied with a guest appearance by Qantas ambassador John Travolta and an aircraft mock-up. But the real drama may unfold when audience members realise they may not be able to go. When Oprah gave away Pontiac G6s in 2004, many audience members had to refuse the cars because of the taxes they would have had to pay on the car's $20,000 price tag (unlike Australia, America levies taxes on prize winnings). There is no word yet how many, if any, winners will have to pass up a vacation on the Flying Kangaroo for a so-called staycation.

Virgin Blue has confirmed what it has been wink winking, nudge nudging at for months: it will introduce a new livery.

The carrier says it has hired Hans Hulsbosch as Creative Director who will be tasked with creating the carrier's new livery as well as corporate identity. Virgin Blue has not given a timeline or cost for the project.

While there was no mention of uniting the group's four brands--Virgin Blue, Pacific Blue, Polynesian Blue, and V Australia--Virgin Blue Group CEO John Borghetti has all but confirmed that.

"Even Brett [Godfrey] before me made comment along the lines that it would be a good thing if one day we operated under one brand. And certainly my view is just that," Borghetti said at the carrier's annual results in Sydney last month.

Borghetti is not ruling out any option, including scrapping the existing boomerang logo or the Virgin brand, although he notes the latter is unlikely. The long-favoured and speculated name would include "Virgin". But as aviation lore goes, when in 1999 Singapore Airlines took a 49% stake in sister Virgin Group airline Virgin Atlantic, one of the terms was "Virgin" could not be used internationally without Singapore Air's permission.

The connotation was that since Singapore Air wanted fifth freedom rights to fly between Australia and America, it did not want the prospect of competing with a carrier under the Virgin brand. Hence why Virgin Blue's international subsidiaries--Pacific Blue, Polynesian Blue, and V Australia--forgo the name "Virgin".

No matter how implicit it was what "V" stood for, the public on multiple continents did not identify with it and arguably still does not. In statements and ads, V Australia is sometimes referred to as a "Richard Branson airline".

Although Australia long rejected Singapore Air's fifth freedom request, the carrier still blocked the use of "Virgin", which many, including sources at Virgin Blue, saw Singapore Air doing out of spite.

Recently the conversation has changed and perhaps Singapore Air isn't a curmudgeon after all. According to sources familiar with the situation, Singapore Air is concerned of being affiliated with a carrier that has low service (and not just by Singapore's standards).

A Virgin Blue spokesman says, "All negotiations regarding the use of Virgin are a matter for Virgin Management not Virgin Blue." Another source familiar with the situation says "arrangements" have been made with Singapore Air over permitting Virgin Blue's future identity to include "Virgin".

Changing Virgin Blue's identity raises the question how much of the deeply-entrenched Virgin culture Borghetti will shed in a move to win more of the corporate market and help the frat house airline become a respectable twenty-something professional.

Quelling concern, Hulsbosch says in a statement, "Our brief is to take the brand to a new level of modern sophistication, keeping with the brands [sic] contemporary young spirit. It will be unmistakably Virgin with a fresh and innovative feel that also knows how to have a little bit of fun." Borghetti says Hulsbosch will create "an identity that can stretch across both the leisure and corporate sector."

In appointing Hulsbosch Borghetti has again called on his Qantas connections: in the 1980s Hulsbosch joined Qantas's then-design house Lunn Design and more recently re-designed on his own the Qantas kangaroo so it would fit on the carrier's A380. (As the superjumbo's entire horizontal stabilizer moves up and down, it would have amputated skippy's legs.)

Between introducing A330s, a new domestic product, and a reinvigorated international network, Borghetti has a lot on his plate. Fortunately Hulsbosch is known for brevity.

Matthew Benns in The Men Who Killed Qantas writes that then-Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon dispatched Hulsbosch to Toulouse to see if the Qantas 'roo would fit on the A380. "Hulsbosch walked back into [Dixon's] office two weeks later and placed on Dixon's desk a hand-drawn cartoon of a kangaroo sitting in a wheelchair."

But brevity and design come at a price: Benns estimates Qantas spent $2 million on the new 'roo, which Hulsbosch professes took ten minutes. Perhaps to offset the cost Borghetti could follow the lead of any true aviation geek and collect Virgin Blue items and once the new brand is introduced, sell the goods on eBay.