The Virgin Group is one of the largest business groups in the world, with successful business ventures in all different corners of the economic landscape. The company has proved itself to be a key player in the mobile telecommunications industry, the railway industry, the banking sector, and perhaps most notably, the aeronautical travel industry. The company has been built from the ground up by British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson. The Group literally took off the ground during its ventures into the commercial flight industry, branching out to form many different departments including the airline Virgin Blue.

Now operating officially under the trade name Virgin Australia Airlines, the company is the second largest airline that is operated in Australia after the country’s flag carrier airline Qantas. In regards to fleet size, the airline is the largest in the world that continues to operate using the Virgin brand. The company is currently based in Bowen Hills in Brisbane, Queensland in Australia, and is therefore enjoying the economical boom that the rest of the country has enjoyed since its recovery from the recent global economical crisis.

Virgin Blue was originally established by Sir Richard Branson himself, along with the airlines former CEO; Australian businessman and entrepreneur Brett Godfrey. The company was formed at the turn of the millennium in the year 2000. The airline operated initially on one single route with only two aircraft. Soon after however, the Australian airline Ansett Australia found itself in financial difficulties and collapsed in early September of 2001. This left the path clear for Virgin Blue to storm in and secure the excellent position that it enjoys today.

Because of this period of rapid growth, the airline is now large enough that it has the capacity to directly serve as many as twenty-nine cities across Australia with domestic flights flying from hubs in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. The company achieve this by utilising a diverse fleet of aircraft that consists of wide bodied Airbus models, and narrower bodied Embraer and Boeing jets.
The airline was initially operating for several years as a budget travel low cost passenger carrying airline. The airline has now however, made efforts to improve its services by adopting a new business model that combines aspects of low cost carrier flights with in-flight services that are more reminiscent of full-service companies. As such, all flights are now equipped with new catering systems on board as of 2011.