Former Virgin Australia ATR 72-500 VH-FVI (Now FlyBig India VT-FBA) Departs Australia For Good – Again!

As mentioned in a Blog post below, former Virgin Australia ATR 72-500 VH-FVI has been re-painted into the livery and titles of new Indian regional airline FlyBig. The ATR originally returned to Australia at the start of 2020 following a period of storage at Nelson in New Zealand.

In late August, VH-FVI was photographed wearing the Indian Registration marking of VT-FBA, but in late September, it had its original Australian Registration marking of VH-FVI taped over this to allow it to complete test flights in the area.

On Friday 9 October, VH-FVI departed Australia and has since entered storage at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Hyderabad in India. The next week, VH-FVI was officially struck off the Australian Aircraft register and placed on the Indian Aircraft register as VT-FBA.

UPDATE!  VT-FBA launched services as the long aircraft in the FlyBig fleet on Sunday 3 January 2021.

Meanwhile, as also mentioned below, another former Virgin Australia ATR 72-500 VH-FVU has also returned to Cairns from Nelson at the start of the year and a has also recently been photographed now wearing the titles and livery of FlyBig, plus the Indian Registration marking of VT-FBB.

Its fate remains unclear.

UPDATE!  In December, VH-FVU/VT-FBB was photographed again wearing its Australian Registration marking and seems to have been now not taken up by FlyBig with the ATR again in storage at Cairns.

All photos taken by Jonathan Williams  ©