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Virgin 1/2 Price Sale - 260,000 Fares: SYD to OOL $60, MEL to HTI $103, ADL to MEL $69 and More @ Virgin Australia

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Virgin Australia has joined in on Qantas and Jetstar's govt-subsized ticket sales:

Virgin Australia is making the following regional seats available under the Tourism and Aviation Network Support Program:

Gold Coast – more than 85,000 seats
Adelaide – more than 85,000 seats
Cairns – more than 10,000 seats
Sunshine Coast – more than 15,000 seats
Alice Springs – more than 1,250 seats
Whitsundays – more than 4,500 seats
Launceston – more than 19,000 seats
Hobart – more than 20,000 seats
Darwin – more than 11,000 seats

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closed Comments

  • -3

    stayed up till midnight last night but couldn't find any virgin flights for Darwin. Another fail for the Morrison government

  • +1

    Was keeping an eye out on a flight to Alice Springs. Yesterday price was $450 return, this morning $380 supposedly half price. Looks like price gouging from the airline

    • +1

      The amazing thing is at $380 - the tax payer is paying half of the total cost for that "half price" discount! Scam!

      • Zero scam! lol
        It's half the regular price for this time of the year and the government 50% funded fares are CLEARLY marked on each airline's relevant website, so you know the exact flights that are subsidised, the government has all this information on regular pricing for the base fares of each airline, obviously not half price for airline sale fares and airlines get no government funding for their own sales.
        I got Melb <> Darwin $145 each way, which is definitely half the regular base fare price.

    • +2

      Yesterday's price is completely irrelevant.

      The discounts will be calculated according to the "average fare" as of February this year

      Cheap flights with a catch: the details behind the government's travel bonanza

      • -1

        I've been checking for a while and prices were never more than $600 return, so at most should be $300 return

        • +2

          You may have formed an impression of the "discount airfare" pricing, not the "average fare".

          There is some data at BITRE - Domestic Air Fares on Real (CPI adjusted) Discount Airfares (cheapest available fare). But the average fare is not transparent and is whatever they measure it to be using their particular methodology.

          Indexes are constructed from BITRE's monthly survey of airline internet booking sites. Fares are recorded only when they are available on the nominated day of travel (the last Thursday of the month). The series is a price index of the lowest available fare in each fare class, weighted over selected routes. It does not measure real airline yields, or average fares paid by passengers.

          It may be an average across different fare stratas including discount economy, standard economy and fully flexible economy. That would therefore be higher than what most people would track as the typical lowest available airfare.

          • +1

            @UrMumsOnlyFan: Very interesting data. Thanks for sharing the link @itstoocheapnottobuy

  • +5

    scomo definitely hates WA after liberals got wiped in the state election….

    • +6

      Morrison's appears to hate everyone apart from his donors, corrupt MPs and big business.

      He keeps dodgy people in office and hands billions of our money to companies of his choosing.

  • +1

    As always, school holiday periods are excluded. Lame.

    • +1

      What do you expect? It’s the highest demand time of the year. They don’t need to offer discounted fares at this time because they know many people will buy at the full price regardless.

  • +1

    Tried booking a flight we already had (in hope of cancelling the original which was double the price) but the system recognised we had a duplicate booking haha.
    Also the system won't let you cancel it either. Not sure if done on purpose hmm.

  • +3

    Stayed up til 2am to try and get flights for several upcoming trips. Flight prices either didn't go down (within sale fare) or were increased from usual. Hopeless.
    All 3 major airline websites were crashing til about 1:00am anyway, and Virgin's sale fares (the ones that did show) didn't appear til about 1:30am.

    • Flight prices either didn't go down (within sale fare) or were increased from usual. Hopeless.

      See above points regarding pricing. There is a lack of transparency about "average fares".

      All 3 major airline websites were crashing til about 1:00am anyway

      Although I encountered errors like everyone else, to be fair the Qantas website performed better than I expected. I managed to complete a booking without much difficulty well before 1am.

      • -1

        That's all well and good, but when 2 hours prior to the sale, flights were $300 and then with the half price fares, they were $299 or $339 … something isn't right there.

        • As written in the first sentence of the linked post, yesterday's price is completely irrelevant. The promo is apparently based on:-

          The discounts will be calculated according to the "average fare" as of February this year

          But we don't really know what that means. As previously written, it may be an average across different fare stratas including discount economy, standard economy and fully flexible economy. That would therefore be higher than what most people would track as the typical lowest available airfare.

          Or it could be calculated some other way. In any event, it's non-transparent despite being funded by taxpayers.

  • +4

    I was looking out for Sydney to Broome as it’s always pricey. Usual one way fares are early 400s, government subsidised ‘half price’ fares $399. Yawn. What a waste of taxpayer $! Airlines pocketing the bulk. Same price at Qantas.

    • Usual one way fares are early 400s, government subsidised ‘half price’ fares $399.

      See above points regarding pricing. There is a lack of transparency about "average fares".

      What a waste of taxpayer $! Airlines pocketing the bulk.

      If this government promotion was based on non-transparent "average fares" in February, it's entirely possible that the airlines delivered their end (even though that may not be particularly impressive to us OzBargainers on some routes). Indeed it's likely.

      If there are criticisms to be made of this hasty promotion (and there are), I know where I would be directing the criticism.

    • I observed the same. :( So not only are you not saving anything on the airfares you will be facing increased pricing for hotels and rental cars from people who don't have time to pay attention to pricing and will be signing up blindly.

      The smart thing seems to be, if you have to go on holiday somewhere, go somewhere not covered by this promotion as I would assume the additional pricing (accommodation and hire cars) would be less than usual due to the lemmings being directed elsewhere.

  • I booked Darwin to Bne over school holidays for $140 pp. Was $280 the day prior, and $350 a month prior!

    • Thats cool

  • It seems Qantas is having similar promotions…..but shorter period

  • The virgin travel bank can't be used to purchase a lot of these because they require it to be a 'Future Credit Fare'.
    Such rubbish.

    • That sounds pretty dodgy. If this yours sincerely the case, (and you have a credit) I would ask for a fee free complete refund and report it to consumer affairs. I read the cancellation policies thoroughly yesterday and didn't see any exclusions to any future sale fares.

      P.S. how convenient that Amex's travel credit covid extension expired yesterday..

      • Can you get the refund from the travel credit prior va’s change of hand? I have $547 which they’ve rolled over.

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