Virgin Australia shares video of planes being ‘woken up’ with flights to resume

With borders reopening and Australians slowly taking to the skies once again, waking up the wings isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Virgin Australia is in the process of “waking up” many of its aircraft that were grounded during COVID-19 in preparation to fly again.

After it was forced to ground its international flights and almost all its domestic flights due to the pandemic, Virgin Australia is ramping up flights around Australia, and is scheduled to operate flights to close to 30 domestic destinations by the end of August.

That means bringing many of its passenger jets back to life after they spent months parked at ports in Sydney, Melbourne, Avalon and Brisbane.

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Virgin Australia is ‘waking up’ its planes as domestic flights pick up. Picture: Virgin Australia

Virgin Australia said it’s no easy feat waking up planes. Picture: Virgin Australia

And it’s no easy feat – veteran Virgin Australia aircraft engineer Todd Chamberlain said it was a careful process of checking each plane before it could finally return to the skies.

“Each aircraft requires over 350 hours of inspections and functional tests to make sure everything is moving like it should and to ensure these aircraft are safe to fly,” Mr Chamberlain said.

“The Virgin Australia engineering team is working hard to get these aircraft back in the sky, so people can get flying again.”

One of the planes that’s getting attention from the engineering team is a Boeing 737 passenger plane that was gutted of its cabin seats and repurposed as a cargo freighter during the pandemic.

Engineers are reinstalling its eight business class seats and 168 economy seats that were removed to make way for freight. Picture: Virgin Australia

Virgin Australia is ‘waking up’ its planes as domestic flights pick up. Picture: Virgin Australia

Now, engineers are reinstalling its eight business class seats and 168 economy seats that were removed to make way for freight.

“Since COVID-19 hit we had to park the majority of our Boeing 737 fleet so we came up with some pretty dynamic ideas to keep aircraft in the air and one of those ideas was carrying additional cargo,” Mr Chamberlain, a Virgin Australia veteran of 20 years, said.

Virgin Australia said it expected demand for domestic travel to continue increasing as state

and territory borders reopen.

A survey of the airline’s customers found about 73 per cent wanted to book a domestic holiday within three months of travel restrictions being lifted.

Virgin Australia is waiving any applicable change fees for bookings made between now and September 30, 2020, including unlimited changes to booking dates.