Big secret inside Virgin Australia’s new Boeing 737 Max 8

Virgin Australia’s new Boeing 737 Max 8 have a special feature the airline isn’t keen to talk about, but passengers will love.

The latest addition to Virgin Australia’s fleet boasts a feature passengers will love but the airline wants to keep quiet.

The brand new Boeing 737 Max 8 has overhead stowage bins large enough to accommodate 176 carry on bags or one for every passenger. In comparison older 737-800s comfortably fit just 118.

Virgin Australia took delivery of its new aircraft in Seattle Wednesday morning but would not allow photographs of the interior.

General manager of aviation, Peter O’Donohue said they did not want to spruik the extra space bins so as not to encourage passengers to bring more carry-on on board.

“We don’t want to publicise that because you don’t want people to think ‘oh bigger bins we’ll take more on’,” said Mr O’Donohue.

“The bags can now go sideways whereas before they had to go flat. It is a selling point but you’re hoping they don’t decide to carry more on.”

He confirmed the carry-on limit for passengers would remain at 7kg even with more overhead space.

Passengers carrying excessive carry-on are what Virgin Australia hopes to avoid by keeping its new larger stowage bins a secret.

Features Virgin was keen to publicise included the inseat power, the relocation of emergency light tracks from floor to seat, and the aircraft’s fuel efficiency and reduced noise.

Chief sustainability officer Christian Bennett said the Max 8s were 40 per cent quieter than their 737-800 predecessor which would make a difference to those on board and on the ground.

“When you’re reducing the noise envelope by as much as these do, that will be a very noticeable difference so it’s another great attribute for this next generation of efficiency in the broader sense of the word,” Mr Bennett said.

Virgin Australia’s order of eight Max 8s were expected to be delivered by mid-2024 before the arrival later in the year of the first of 25 Max 10s.

The Max 8s were being leased from the China Aviation Leasing Group, known as CALC, in a deal struck late last year when Boeing delayed delivery of the Max 10s.

Mr O’Donohue said Virgin Australia needed to add capacity and CALC was the “best partner at that period of time”.

“It was a period when (airlines) were starting to then go back into the market and their order book was still here at Boeing and we were able to secure an aircraft from them,” he said.

Chief operations officer Stuart Aggs said the new aircraft represented a “light on the hill” for the airline after some dark years of administration and the Covid pandemic.

He was also hopeful the fleet renewal would add value to the airline’s planned initial public offering (IPO) expected to take place later this year.

“The Max is an important one (for investors) because it’s new technology, it talks to fleet age which is an important thing from an investment lens perspective and it also helps with our ESG aspirations,” Mr Aggs said.

“It’s level of importance is for investors to say but for the make up of our business and the demonstration that we’re going to deliver these aeroplanes and grow our business, that’s a good thing from an IPO perspective.”

Passengers carrying excessive carry-on luggage is putting an added strain on airport security and in some cases leading to flight delays

The new aircraft was destined to fly Virgin Australia’s new Cairns-Tokyo (Haneda) route with future Max jets also expected to operate short to mid-haul international flights.

Previously a money-loser for Virgin Australia, Mr Aggs said the airline’s slimline international network was now profitable and they were constantly on the lookout for new routes.

“We won’t get ourselves into the position we got in before where we were spread too thin and we had concerns about profitability on a seasonal basis. We won’t put ourselves in that position again,” said Mr Aggs.

For that reason, more flights across the Tasman were out of the question, with Virgin Australia currently flying to just one New Zealand destination — Queenstown.

“That was one of the areas where the previous organisation really struggled and in fact Qantas has struggled as have many other carriers to make trans-Tasman profitable,” Mr Aggs said.

“If you think about the amount of capacity that will come back on trans-Tasman it’s unlikely we’ll go into other destinations. There’s way too much competition at a unit cost level and it’s difficult to compete with wide-body aeroplanes doing that sector.”

The writer travelled to Seattle as a guest of Virgin Australia.