Virgin Australia has made the departure time of its daily flight to Los Angeles later to allow more passengers to connect without staying overnight in Sydney.

The change is part of Virgin Australia’s joint venture agreement with Delta Air Lines on trans-Pacific routes, with codesharing commencing in November.

Virgin’s long-haul offshoot V Australia’s daily Sydney to Los Angeles flight will take off in the early afternoon.

The airline hopes the later departure will allow more passengers, particularly those from Perth, to connect through to the US without having to spend the night in Sydney.

Virgin Australia group executive corporate advisory Merren McArthur said the joint venture would give passengers a choice of three flights per day between Australia and the US.

The next step in co-operating with Delta would be expanding codesharing on each other’s domestic networks.

That would give Virgin Australia passengers access to 250 destinations in the US, Canada and Mexico, Ms McArthur said.

The two carriers received regulatory clearance to form a joint venture on trans-Pacific flights from US and Australian authorities earlier this year.

The combined Virgin-Delta operation will comprise about 25 per cent of all available seats between Australia and the US, compared with Qantas-Jetstar (50 per cent), United Airlines (18 per cent) and Hawaiian Airlines (seven per cent).

The alliances with overseas carriers was a key plank in Virgin chief executive John Borghetti’s plan to capture a 20 per cent share of the corporate travel market dominated by Qantas.

Separately, V Australia’s flights to Los Angeles will now arrive at Terminal Five to allow better onward connections on Delta’s domestic network.

Virgin closed up half a cent at 29 cents, on a day the broader market fell more than 1.5 per cent.