{"id":392707,"date":"2026-04-15T03:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T03:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/392707\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T03:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T03:34:09","slug":"virgin-to-trim-domestic-flights-ahead-of-fuel-cost-rising-by-up-to-40m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/392707\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgin to trim domestic flights ahead of fuel cost rising by up to $40m"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Australian airlines are halting entire routes and merging slots to ensure planes are full, as the aviation industry battles soaring jet fuel costs and likely supply uncertainty over the coming months.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Virgin has become the latest airline to update the market on its flight capacity, with the country&#8217;s second-biggest airline facing rising fuel costs and unstable pricing on jet fuel into July.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">It follows a similar update by Australia&#8217;s biggest airline yesterday. Qantas is facing up to $800 million in extra fuel costs in the coming months, and has temporarily halted four regional domestic routes and axed one permanently.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">The price of jet fuel has shot up by 150 per cent for the Asia and Oceania region, <a class=\"Link_link__5eL5m ScreenReaderOnly_srLinkHint__OysWz Link_showVisited__C1Fea Link_showFocus__ALyv2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.iata.org\/en\/publications\/economics\/fuel-monitor\/\" data-component=\"Link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">according to IATA figures<\/a>, as the oil shock caused by war in the Middle East reverberates.<\/p>\n<p>What are the airlines specifically saying?<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Virgin has today told the ASX it will slightly reduce flights by 1 per cent in the three months to June 30<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">It expects fuel costs to be $30\u201340 million more than it had previously expected in the second half of this financial year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Virgin said its fuel suppliers had provided assurances about near-term aviation fuel supply &#8220;to support its operations well into May 2026&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">&#8220;The price of jet fuel has been extremely volatile and more than doubled since the end of February 2026, which impacts fuel costs for the June 2026 quarter,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">The airline said it would increase fuel hedging in the short term to mitigate the price volatility, &#8220;with other operational levers including fare and capacity adjustments available to be implemented over time&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Virgin issued a market update after rival Qantas yesterday flagged an up to $800 million hit from additional fuel costs, and cut its domestic flight capacity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">While Virgin&#8217;s domestic capacity will be cut in the current quarter, it still expects domestic capacity to be 1 per cent higher over the second half of the financial year as a whole.<\/p>\n<p>Loading&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian airlines are halting entire routes and merging slots to ensure planes are full, as the aviation industry&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,161311,184,186859,163003,85,117780,46,114994,41326],"class_list":{"0":"post-392707","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-diesel-prices","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-flights-cut","12":"tag-fuel-costs","13":"tag-il","14":"tag-iran-war","15":"tag-israel","16":"tag-strait-of-hormuz","17":"tag-virgin"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}