On November 14th of this year, Virgin Australia officially unveiled plans for their upcoming service connecting Brisbane to Tokyo at a press conference held here in Brisbane. The airline currently already operates two Hong Kong services, one from Sydney and one from Melbourne. Still, this new service will ultimately end the Melbourne service as the service was having trouble getting consistent passengers numbers and overall wasn’t a profitable as the airline had hoped.

Japan is an extremely popular destination for Australian travellers, and it’s soo popular that the passenger numbers have actually grown 50% since 2015, which is pretty remarkable. The partnership with ANA will also be vital and prove to be an essential aspect of the success of this new service.

To see what the Virgin Australia A330 business class product is like, take a look here.

When the new service was first announced, the airline didn’t release the full schedule for the flights and only provided the commencement date of March 29th, 2020.

Here is the schedule for the new Japan services:

• VA77 will depart Brisbane at 11:40 am and arrive into Tokyo Haneda at 8 pm the same day
• VA76 will depart Tokyo Haneda at 9:45 pm and arrive into Brisbane at 7:45 am the following day

The service will be a daily one, and the airline will utilise their Airbus A330-200’s which are the same used on the Hong Kong services as well as select coast to coast flights.

The new flights are officially on sale today and to celebrate this, the airline is offering a sale on the flights. As an example, you can get an economy return ticker for $699, and a business class return ticket for $3499. These flights are very well priced, and I’m heavily considering taking advantage of one of the sales.

To learn more about the sale and see flight combinations, take a look at the Virgin Australia website here.

What are the best points to use for the new Tokyo services?

Virgin Australia’s Velocity

• Business – 83,600 points one-way in Business
• Economy – 49,400 points one-way in Economy

Singapore Airlines’ Krisflyer

• Business – 64,000 points one-way in Business
• Economy – 22,000 points one-way in Economy

Overall I think this new service will be extremely popular and can see that it’ll be much, much more profitable than what Hong Kong has been. I’m excited not only as someone that loves Japan but also as a passenger that lives in Brisbane. In Queensland, we don’t have any Japanese carriers offering services directly so this will fill a gap for a lot of people who may not want to travel on Qantas or who don’t want to fly via another city.

Will you fly on Virgin’s new Tokyo Haneda service?