Virgin chief Jayne Hrdlicka says the airline is ‘at the top of the pile’

With demand up, travellers can expect higher airfares from both major airlines, says the Virgin Australia chief.

Virgin Australia chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka says the airline is “at the top of the pile” after on-time flight performance rebounded to 70 per cent.

Speaking at a business breakfast in Brisbane on Thursday, Ms Hrdlicka said she was proud to be in a position where many thought the company was ready to re-list on the ASX after an “extraordinary amount of heavy lifting”.

The former Jetstar chief executive was installed as chief executive in 2020, following Virgin’s sale to US private equity firm Bain Capital.

Ms Hrdlicka said Virgin, with a 7000-strong workforce, was now a “different company that was able to compete effectively”.

“For the last six months we’ve been competitively at the top of the pile so we’re delivering better on-time performance, better completion rates and better statistics in every part of the operation – and commercially we’re performing really well,” she said.

Her comments come after a difficult period for the airline and larger rival Qantas which was forced to send an apology to frequent flyers last month, offering $50 in travel credit.

Ms Hrdlicka suggested that Virgin was benefiting from her former employer’s woes, and that there was strong demand across the full spectrum of customers, from corporates and small to medium enterprises, to leisure travellers.

Virgin Australia chief Jayne Hrdlicka speaks at the Brisbane Airport business breakfast on Thursday.

“You can look at the statistics over the last six months to see we’re carrying more revenue, more passengers than our capacity share, which means there’s a lot of demand for flying on Virgin Australia,” she told the breakfast.

Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics data shows that since April, Virgin had consistently beat Qantas on punctuality.

Even in July, when the airline suffered crippling levels of staff absenteeism due to sickness, Virgin managed to land 52.6 per cent of flights on time, to Qantas’s 47.1 per cent.

Ms Hrdlicka said that in August, on-time performance had improved to about 70 per cent, while Qantas was understood to be at about 66 per cent.

Although flying had been reduced in response to staff shortages, Ms Hrdlicka hoped to restore volume for the Christmas period.

However, travellers could expect higher airfares from Virgin, as well as Qantas which last week flagged 10 per cent increases for domestic fares and 20 per cent for international.

“We’re in a period where demand is much higher than supply and so prices have gone up,” Ms Hrdlicka said.

“Fuel prices have gone up, we’ve got underlying inflation embedded in the business, so there will be price increases that continue to help us offset inflationary pressures.”

Virgin’s financial results will be released later this year. In 2021 it reported an underlying before-tax loss of $76.8m.

On Thursday, Ms Hrdlicka suggested the 2022 result would be much stronger.