On Tuesday, April 21, 2020, some of the companies within the Virgin Australia Group announced their entry into Voluntary Administration; with Deloitte appointed as the administrators. The decision to enter voluntary administration was made in an effort to secure the future of Virgin Australia Group, and to emerge on the other side of the COVID-19 crisis. The intention of administrators is to undertake a process to restructure and re-finance the business and bring it out of administration as soon as possible.

Importantly, Virgin will continue to operate as a business during its period of administration, which means the current reduced schedule will continue to operate, and all charter and cargo operations are unchanged. Paul Scurrah and the current Executive Leadership Team will continue to lead and run the business, and will support the administrators throughout this restructure.

Platinum shares Virgin's strong belief that Australia needs a second airline, and are heartened by its determination to keep flying. Virgin Australia will play a vital role in getting the Australian economy back on its feet after the COVID-19 pandemic by ensuring the country has access to competitive and high-quality air travel.

At this time, Platinum is not in a position to provide any advice as to the potential implications of Virgin's announcement on its contracts, flight credit or Velocity points program. We can confirm that the Velocity frequent flyer program is a separate entity, and has not been placed into voluntary administration at this time.

There is, however, a temporary halt on all Velocity redemptions effective immediately. This means clients will not be able to redeem Points for rewards at this time. Velocity has advised members that:

• Your points are not going anywhere. They will remain in your account.
• Existing points will not expire during this period, and the expiration period of existing points will be extended in line with the length of the redemption halt.
• You can continue to earn points through Velocity partners during the halt.
• The initial length of the trading halt is four weeks. This period may yet be extended.

 
You can access the ASX release about yesterday's announcement here.