Virgin Australia, nearly 26 per cent owned by Air New Zealand, is from next 23 March 2016, Virgin Australia will withdraw from flying to Denpasar from Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth but its low cost subsidiary Tigerair Australia will launch in the short-haul worldwide market by picking up those routes. Revenue from the airline’s global division fell 3.3% in the financial year just ended due to increased competition, particularly in the South East Asian routes.

“Our desire has always been to have the most fuel-efficient, modern aircraft possible and clearly the opportunities that we see in front of us with the MAX and converting some orders to the MAX is very important”, Borghetti told reporters during the company’s full year results presentation in Sydney on Friday. However, the concern from investors more recently has been that Virgin risks ceding ground too quickly as it reshaped itself as an upmarket rival.

That was partly offset by a A$35 million negative impact of a weaker Australian dollar on operations. “Improving our return on invested capital will continue to remain a strong focus for the group”, he said. This year Tiger led Jetstar on on-time departures and its customer satisfaction rate rose 11 points to 75 per cent. Phased in perks like check-in kiosks and a mobile app, as well as payment options for queue-jumping, picking seats and receiving food in-flight have also added to the passenger experience.

In Virgin’s domestic market, however, there were huge increases, with the airline raking in $111 million (before taxes) on flights within Australia in the past year – representing an increase on the 2013-2014 period of over $200 million.

Virgin Australia chief executive officer John Borghetti said the airline delivered a significant improvement in performance for fiscal 2015, which reflects the positive trajectory of the overall business. Virgin still expects to take delivery of four new 737-800s in FY16, but will also return three 737s to lessors during the year.