Virgin is starting Tigerair flights to Bali

The existing Virgin Australia flights travelling to Bali will be replaced by Tiger Airlines.

Virgin’s worldwide division made an underlying loss of $68.3 million in 2014/15, offsetting a turnaround in its domestic operations and dragging the group into the red again. In recent months it has introduced business class on the Tasman and Pacific routes and integrated management of its New Zealand operations into the rest of the worldwide business.

“We also have a strong focus on utilisation and actually getting more out of the planes we have”, Narayan said. The new services will feature all economy seating for up to 180 passengers, with five rows of extra legroom seating (18 seats at the front of the cabin and 12 seats in exit rows) that can be purchased in advance of travel for extra comfort.

The service, which is already available on flights from Germany to New York and Miami, will also apply on superjumbo routes to Houston, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, Delhi, Beijing, San Francisco, Shanghai, Seoul and Singapore.

John Borghetti, the CEO of Virgin Australia said that the carrier showed a noteworthy improvement in its fiscal 2015 performance.

Macquarie Equities analyst Sam Dobson said the result highlighted “rational behaviour” across Australia’s aviation sector.

However, as part of the overhaul, Virgin will redeploy the Boeing 737 aircraft it has used flying to Bali and Phuket to trans-Tasman routes including Sydney-Christchurch and Melbourne-Christchurch.

The standout performer was the loyalty program, Velocity, with an 8 per cent lift in underlying earnings to $81.2 million.

He declined to comment on when Virgin would pay a dividend, saying that “is a question for another day”. Delivered straight from the Airbus factory in Hamburg, the new A320 will be the first in the Tigerair Australia fleet to feature “sharklets” on the wingtips, one of the latest aerodynamic design features from the aircraft manufacturer.

The result was a A$260 million improvement on the previous year for the country’s second biggest carrier after Qantas and the airline said it expected the positive trajectory would continue.

Tiger Australia trimmed its losses to $8.6 million, a $42 million improvement on the past year. Qantas will report a near $1 billion annual pre-tax profit later this month following a major cost-cutting drive that has included 5000 staff redundancies.