Virgin Australia, on the brink of collapse and Australia’s second-largest airline. The airline has suspended it’s international flights due to the virus however it should be noted that repatriation flights are aplenty right now which have led to some pretty remarkable flights such as Virgin Australia’s.
19hrs and 43min, that’s longer than it takes to fly over 1 million baguettes arranged end to end, it’s also the flight time of Virgin Australia’s repatriation flight from Paris to Brisbane. Their 777-300ER which is mainly used for transpacific routes between Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Los Angeles was to repatriate French citizens from New Zealand back to Paris, a task Air New Zealand or Air France wasn’t up to. The Aussies, unlike the crazy Texans, came to rescue, operating their fully loaded 11-year-old 777-300ER VH-VPD from Auckland to Paris via Hong Kong, on the way back however the empty aircraft flew back to their base of Brisbane non-stop. The 777 left Paris with 144 tonnes of fuel, only 6 remained after landing in the Queensland capital, it was a journey of 18,209km, the longest Virgin Australia non stop flight ever. This good publicity comes as a much-needed boost as the airline faces serious money problems.
The aircraft, a 777-300ER equipped with GE90-155B engines was ordered by Virgin Blue in 2009 for its then subsidy V Australia, it operated its first revenue flight as VA1 from Sydney to Los Angeles. In 2011 it was transferred to Virgin Australia, named “Avalon Beach” and has been operating trips across the Pacific without any crazy Texans or incidents ever since
Those Texas jokes were purely tongue in cheek, no actual offence intended
VH-VPD during takeoff image credit
