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Australia's second-largest airline is under fire for conducting a stunt as part of the celebrations of Australian Football League (AFL) grand final day.
Virgin Australia flew three planes around the outskirts of Melbourne on Saturday, with the pilots "drawing" the shape of the AFL premiership cup.
"Yesterday, we created the largest AFL Premiership Cup in history by 'drawing' a 246-kilometer outline of the trophy over Melbourne in our A330 aircraft at 15,000 ft," the airline posted on Facebook on Sunday night, with a short video outlining the route.
The AFL grand final drew the biggest Australian television audience of the year on Saturday, with 2.64 million people - and another 98,000 from the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) - watching Hawthorn secure its third premiership in a row.
Virgin, who is the AFL's official airline partner, copped criticism for the act online with people concerned the carrier was "wasting" money and fuel, and had no regard for "carbon emissions".
With the West Coast Eagles, a Perth-based side, making it into the grand final, 15,000-20,000 Western Australians were expected to trek to the MCG to watch the decider.
Many were forced to travel by car due to Virgin bumping up the price of its domestic flights from Perth to Melbourne. Some of Virgin's domestic airfares were more expensive than flights to Europe at the weekend.
Social media users accused the company of passing costs of the stunt, which took 32 minutes and encompassed 43 turns, onto its passengers.
"Why didn't you just charge less for the flights to Melbourne instead of wasting money on drawing a line around Melbourne on a flight ma?" one user said.
But others lauded the airlines creativity - with another commenting that it was a "very cool" idea.
Virgin defended the decision saying "as the official airline of the AFL, (they) wanted to do something special as part of our flyover". Enditem
