Virgin Australia starts flights to Tokyo!

After recently winning a highly sought after flight slot at Haneda Airport, Tokyo; Virgin Australia will start flying from Brisbane on 29 March 2020. To celebrate this new route, Virgin is running a promotion for free flights on the new route. The prizes include:

• Major prize consisting of return business class flights to Tokyo for two’ and
• Minor prize pool consisting of six return economy flights to Tokyo for two.

Entering this Virgin Australia promotion

All you need to do is go here and sign up to Virgin Australia’s V-Mail newsletter. This newsletter keeps you up to date with latest Virgin Australia happenings. If you are already signed up to V-Mail you can still enter the promotion on the same page. Make sure you sign up before the 3 December as that is end date for this promotion.

New slots at Haneda?

Recently Haneda airport opened up four new slots for flights between Tokyo and Australia. Haneda is much closer to Tokyo city compared to Narita making these slots very valuable for he airlines involved. Two slots were given to Japan Airlines and ANA for flights to Australia. The other 2 slots were up for grabs for Australian airlines to be determined by the International Air Services Commission. Virgin Australia applied for one of the slots but Qantas greedily applied for both.

Fortunately for Virgin, one slot was given to each airline and their respective routes will start in March 2020. It seems Virgin is planning to use an Airbus A330 on this route with their well regarded ‘The Business’ class. As Virgin is winding down their Hong Kong routes, citing lack of financial viability; the aircraft will likely move from that route onto the Tokyo route.

Also If you haven’t joined Virgin Australia’s Velocity rewards program you can sign up here, it’s free to join! If you sign up using this link you will get a bonus 2,000 velocity points when you earn your first 50 points; and we will also get 1,000 points for the referral.

Is anyone else excited about Virgin now flying to Tokyo and adding some competition for the destination? Are you going to sign up for this promotion? What would do if you won? Let us know in a comment below, we love reading them.