Flights operated on behalf of Virgin Australia by Qatar Airways have been cancelled until at least mid-June over growing instability in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
In 2025, Qatar Airways bought a 25 per cent stake in Virgin Australia, providing the Australian airline with aircraft and crew for flights to Doha. <\/p>\n
This bypassed government restrictions on the number of flights Qatar Airways could operate under its own name. <\/p>\n
The services, coded VA1 to VA22, have been available since mid last year, however it\u2019s unclear when these services might return. <\/p>\n
\u201cVirgin Australia services operated by Qatar Airways remain impacted by the ongoing security situation in the Middle East,\u201d a statement from Virgin Australia said. <\/p>\n
Since the US-Israel war on Iran began on February 28, Qatar Airlines has been hit the hardest by airspace closures. <\/p>\n
About 87 per cent of its services have been cancelled. <\/p>\n
Virgin Australia has been offering refunds, credit or re-booking up to the end of October. <\/p>\n
This applies to anyone booked on one of its VA-coded Qatar flights, now which have all cancelled until June 15. <\/p>\n
After a period of significant grounding due to airspace closure, Qatar Arlines was only flying a fraction of its usual routes from to and from Australia.<\/p>\n
There are flights to Sydney and Melbourne on alternating days and from Perth to Melbourne then onto Doha every other day. <\/p>\n
Using safe air corridors from Doha meant the flights were longer and limited for travellers. <\/p>\n
This follows a \u2018Do Not Travel\u2019 advisory issued by Smartraveller and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flights operated on behalf of Virgin Australia by Qatar Airways have been cancelled until at least mid-June over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[256436,2095,2324,1724,64,63,689,160153,286574,265904,286570,286567,5575,6897,131341,32505,647,12241,673,44,3354,187436,2041,2067,677,286572,46,96232,3861,18986,286573,286569,14640,286571,12540,286568,670,29994,2614,660,7033,12000,3439],"class_list":["post-585392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-airspace-closures","tag-america","tag-anthony-albanese","tag-asia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-department-of-foreign-affairs-and-trade","tag-fighter-plane","tag-fuel-price","tag-halts-flights","tag-instability-escalates","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-john-appleyard","tag-leo","tag-melbourne","tag-middle-east","tag-new-south-wales","tag-news","tag-news-headlines","tag-newswire-news","tag-north-america","tag-northern-america","tag-oceania","tag-ongoing-security-situation","tag-perth","tag-pope-leo-xiv","tag-qantas","tag-qatar-airways","tag-routes-fromn","tag-safe-air-corridors","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-shares-sat","tag-southern-asia","tag-staff-secondment","tag-sydney","tag-united-arab-emirates","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-victoria","tag-virgin","tag-western-asia","tag-western-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}