TAMWORTH council will fight to hang-on to the city's current flights with Virgin as the airline reports massive losses and job cuts.
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This week, it was revealed the airline would sack 750 office workers and reassess all of its current routes after the company recorded a $315 million loss for the last financial year.
Virgin Australia currently runs a twice-daily service between Tamworth and Sydney, six days a week.
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Tamworth Regional Council mayor Col Murray said there hadn't been any word from the airline yet, but he vowed to fight to retain the current level of service.
"I understand the Virgin business has not been trading as strongly as they would like, I guess it is reasonable to expect the management would consider changes," Cr Murray said.
"How that effects Tamworth, it is just too soon to understand that.
"We will be defending our flights with Virgin very, very strongly if they come subject to this tightening."
It comes more than a year after Tamworth lost the services of JetGo from the airport after the company went into liquidation.
Tamworth airport also has QantasLink providing a Sydney service, while Fly Corporate solely offers flight to Brisbane.
While the future of Virgin passenger flights in Tamworth remain up in the air, Cr Murray believed it would have no bearing on the seemingly stalled deal with the airline to establish a pilot training academy in the city.
"I think they are two different subjects, we are waiting on the approval of the Foreign Investment Review Board for the Virgin flight school," he said.
"We are expecting to hear in the next couple of weeks."