Virgin Blue has embarked on a significant capacity increase from Townsville with the launch of four new direct services to Cairns, Canberra, Gold Coast and Rockhampton. The airline already operates six flights a day to Townsville from Brisbane and Sydney but this is its first foray in to intra-Queensland routes.
Virgin Blue chief executive, Brett Godfrey commented, "This is indeed a first for the Virgin Blue Group of Airlines. Never before have we committed four new routes to the one city on the same day so it's a leap of faith in Townsville, the community and the tourism potential of the destination. We are hopeful we will be on the receiving end of more of the terrific support we have received from the first day we touched down in this key regional Queensland city."
Three of the four new services offer direct flights to destinations not currently serviced as a non-stop flight by any airline, namely Canberra, Gold Coast and Rockhampton. Cairns is served at present with a connecting service.
Godfrey continued, "After consultation with tourism and industry stakeholders, we identified these markets as being of importance to the people of Townsville in terms of convenient direct services so are willing to back these requests, commit aircraft to them and give them a shot. Most of the focus of the new services is around intra-regional Queensland routes and this is an ideal opportunity to stimulate tourism within our home state, help businesses fly smarter and more affordably and provide Townsville, Rockhampton and the Gold Coast with closer internal connections as well as a direct link to Canberra."
Virgin Blue will operate the Embraer E-Jets on these routes.
The airline has also begun direct daily services from Canberra to Hobart, also with E-Jets.
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