Virgin is standardising – and making more dense – its seating.
The company’s transformation program aims to enhance revenue through more offerings, cutting costs through improved productivity, and driving deeper loyalty to Virgin’s Velocity program.
The cost of the IPO and Qatar Airways “wet lease” transaction were $115.9 million. The deal gives Virgin access to Qatar’s international longhaul network, without the cost of maintaining the fleet.
The company’s transformation program is expected to generate $400 million in benefits in 2026 and more for the next few years “and beyond”.
“We’re in a high inflationary environment in aviation and so we need to be not just offsetting [the inflation] but getting beyond it,” Emerson said.
Seat densification
Strauss said: “We’ve still got a lot of the fleet density opportunities, putting the additional aircraft in the fleet, we’re only a little more halfway on that.”
Additionally, Virgin Australia Regional Airlines is being simplified and more technology benefits are coming.
“There’s a long pipeline still to come,” Stauss said.
Part of the transformation involves a seat densification program.
CEO Virgin Australia Dave Emerson.Credit: Edwina Pickles
Emerson said adding more seats to the aircraft “really benefits the customer because… Sometimes today we show up in the plane has a few more or few fewer seats than we had planned and that’s not great for the customer experience.”
“So we’re setting it up now so each plane is set up with exactly the same configuration and for some of the planes that needs an extra row of seats, but not all of them.”
Other revenue streams are strong too. Velocity contributed $450 million, up from $409 million and added 900,000 new members.
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“The Qatar deal has really helped our Velocity program and created a very positive dynamic for customers,” said Emerson, who noted that on a profit and loss basis “it hasn’t really affected us positively or negatively”.
Atlas Funds chief investment officer Hugh Dive said Virgin’s results had to be read in parallel with Qantas’ to get a reading of where the company stood.
While Virgin had smaller capital expenditure than Qantas which is refreshing its fleet, overall the airlines were tracking in a similar direction.
Virgin’s load factor – a measure of the used seat capacity, or the fullness of a flight – is at 84.9 per cent compared to Qantas domestic at 78.1 per cent.
“Virgin’s load factor is a lot higher than Qantas domestic – but both are pretty good,” said Dive.
Jetstar domestic meanwhile is at 89.5, which helps explain its contribution to Qantas.
Revenue rose as well to $5.8 billion in 2025 from $5.63 billion in 2024, a growth of 3.1 per cent.
Virgin made a successful return to the sharemarket in June, valued at $2.3 billion, after selling $685 million worth of stock to fund managers and retail investors at $2.90 a share.
Virgin was delisted from the ASX in 2020 amid mounting debts and losses. Having entered administration, it was bought by US-based Bain Capital, the private equity firm Emerson worked for before joining Virgin’s management in 2021.
Virgin continues “to make great progress” on having small, caged dogs and cats in cabins, Emerson said.
“I think that you should see us doing actual live trials quite soon.”
Asked about passengers with pet allergies, Emerson said: “We’re confident that the process and procedures that we put in place will work for all of our customers”.
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