News September 20, 2018

Virgin Australia responds to Qantas’ decision to axe music from flights

Just a couple of days ago, Qantas announced that your flights are about to get a whole lot duller as they revealed plans to axe music from their flights.

In its place though, the airline plans to implement a small number of podcasts, including ‘talking business’ and ‘kids audiobooks’.

While Qantas claimed their decision was due to the fact that “fewer and fewer of our customers are tuning into the radio and music channels”, the Aussie music industry hit back at these claims, and condemned their lack of support for local artists.

Qantas says no-one listens to their music channels/selections. The lack lustre curation of music focused audio/video could be the cause! @Qantas we’d love to talk to you about taking Aussie music to the world – get onboard! https://t.co/QFSmoYmk4m via @AustFreqFlyer

— Dean Ormston (@deanapra) September 17, 2018

Now, rival airline Virgin Australia has responded to Qantas’ decision to remove music from their flights.

In a statement released this afternoon, Virgin noted how they were “proud to support the Australian music industry”, and showcase new and emerging artists to 24 million passengers every year.

The airline noted that their dedication to supporting bands and artists includes the following:

Offering an artist/band the opportunity to host a two-hour feature playlist onboard every month, demonstrating our commitment to giving new talent the opportunity to expand their audience reach! Artists who have recorded the feature playlist in the past include: Vance Joy, Jimmy Barnes, Garbage, Diesel, Troy Casser-Daley and The Rubens just to name a few;
Being the only Australian airline to offer individual artists 64 kilograms of checked baggage when artists are travelling domestically;
Featuring the NIDA and Triple J Unearthed Music Video Competition winners onboard since 2014; being a major sponsor of Australia’s leading new music festival, BIGSOUND, and featuring a highlights video onboard in the lead up to each year’s festival; and offering our guests a vast array of curated music playlists that appeal to all types of musical tastes.

“In addition to this, we have also been shortlisted for the Best Original Audio Award for ‘The Voices of Australia’ collection of hosted playlists at the 2019 Airline Passenger Experience Awards,” Virgin Australia continued.

“We are proud to be the Australian airline of choice for the Australian music industry and we will continue to find ways to ensure that Australian music is an integral part of our inflight entertainment services.”

While Qantas is yet to issue any statement in regards to the backlash their decision, we can only assume that Aussie music-lovers are going to be making their choice of airline very clear in the near future.