Virgin Blue might be playing Brer Rabbit pleading not to be flung into the Briar Patch over the misfortunes of its V Australia subsidiary.

The generally negative coverage given to V Australia’s ‘ruinously costly’ tilt at the Qantas dominated routes between Australia and the US doesn’t quit fit into the hole dug for it by the media, or for that matter, Virgin Blue’s management.

Owner Virgin Blue says the timing is horrid, that the start up costs are steep, and that they ruined a pretty good underlying profit for the group in the six months to 31 December.

All of those statements are true. But more is going on for an operation that starts the initial service between Sydney and Los Angeles this Friday afternoon.

V Australia is using a 360 seat Boeing 777-300ER that has a much more realistic division of capacity between economy, premium economy and business class than the giant Airbus A380 which is already taking over the Qantas services to America in a 450 seat layout. Luck maybe, but Qantas seems to have over catered for a shrinking cadre of high fare paying corporate travellers, while the Virgins are offering smaller premium club rooms including two bars, and a private suite conversion in which seven business class seats can be isolated from the rest of the flight.

Getting these proportions between economy and premium travellers right can drive many millions of dollars of advantage from one airline to another, especially if one of them, like V Australia, has started from a clean sheet, and included the levels of efficiency Qantas is trying to get from Jetstar.

Brett Godfrey posed in Premium Economy in an effort to get the media to look at the legroom instead of the usual stunning models. Photo by Peter Ricketts

The problem for Jetstar is that it bet on the wrong Boeing, the much delayed and now range challenged 787 Dreamliner, which when it does turn up, will operate via Auckland, adding several hours to a trip made miserable by Jetstar’s trade mark crippling lack of leg room and the joys of paying for what is widely criticised as very poor food and over priced drinks.

What V Australia seems to have done is come up with quirky product that doesn’t replicate the equivalent fare categories on Qantas. The toilets play rock music…Yes they do…all of the seats are roomy for the type of cabin, and when you get a blanket you don’t have to choose which part of you will stay cold. It seems to have been designed with the maxim in mind that if you just duplicate an existing product you will fail.

Being ‘different’ is critical.

Eventually the 777 may prove too small for the trans Pacific routes, but the jet is ideal for some routes to South Africa, for which V Australia has already been granted future capacity, it is well suited to northern China and Asian cities, and it is right sized for taking on Qantas to London, when the current air treaty comes up for renewal in about two years from now. Or Dublin, or Paris, or Amsterdam, routes that defy the Qantas cost base and fleet utilisation practices and may do so for some time to come.

V Australia does have some strategic disadvantages however. Qantas can connect its customers in Los Angeles and San Francisco via American Airlines to almost anywhere in the US many times a day, or even on its own flights that continue to New York City. V Australia has no answer to that for the time being, although flying within the US is so awful that offering long terms rentals of soft top Chevvies and pointing its customers toward the real America, of two lane blacktop roads and laid back country towns is a notion I’d personally lobby Richard Branson or Brett Godfrey to take up.