The inauguration of Virgin Australia Airlines, by Sir Richard Branson, as a domestic carrier in 2000 basically aimed at the convenience of the budget travelers. The Airlines was inaugurated as relaxed informal airline. Sir Richard was open-minded, amiable, and generous with his management team, imaginative, audacious and exclusive in his thoughtfulness. Initially started as a low-cost carrier, the company improved its services to turn itself into a “new-world carrier” as described by themselves (Virgin Blue media release, 2011, para. 2).However all these faltered when Qantas’ past marketing manager took over during 2011. The airline is financially weak and its share price has slumped.
Virgin Australia Airlines has a strong market value and image owing to its innovative ideas and creative thinking. It operates a rapidly growing fleet basically comprising of Jets and Airbuses. The low average fleet age helps the company to reduce maintenance cost of the aircrafts. Financial performance of the company was not so encouraging in 2011 because of rising fuel price, high value of Australian dollar and environmental disaster. Nevertheless, the company has been successful over the past few years and future stance is favorable.
Some of the key success factors of Virgin Australia are heap flights to major destinations, best quality, innovativeness, good flying records, strong brand image etc. However, the company has been unsuccessful to draw attention of the corporate customers