V Australia, Virgin Blue's long-haul subsidiary, plans to launch flights to Thailand's beach resort Phuket and Johannesburg in South Africa later this year.
Twice-weekly flights to Phuket from Brisbane will begin on 22 November and once-weekly Phuket-Melbourne services on 3 December, says the airline. Twice-weekly Melbourne-Johannesburg flights will start on 13 March 2010, it adds.
The carrier says that it will also begin twice-weekly Melbourne-Los Angeles services on 1 December. It began operations in February with a Sydney-Los Angeles service, and added Brisbane-Los Angeles flights in April.
V Australia has also applied for permission to begin flights between Australia and Fiji.
It will operate Boeing 777-300ERs on all of these services.
"Travellers outbound will experience Australian aviation at its best to the USA, Thailand and South Africa and we have high hopes for inbound tourism as we work with partners in our new markets to help develop traffic into Australia via Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne," says Virgin Blue CEO Brett Godfrey.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
