[AMcWhirter]

Surprise, surprise … who could have guessed Emirates would gain a Heathrow slot from Virgin Atlantic ?

During the current winter season Emirates had been leasing a slot from Cathay Pacific. But the lease expires soon.

This Cathay Pacific slot has enabled Emirates to operate seven daily flights from London Heathrow to Dubai.

Emirates deploys B777-300ER for this seventh flight (all the other six are operated by A380s).

The slot being leased from Virgin Atlantic is being used for EK41 and EK42.

This news is confirmed by ACL which handles the Heathrow slot allocations.

[sparkyflier]

What did I say in another thread about what VS might use with a new slot.. and once again they have given it to another airline, for a route which is already served multiple times a day. And yet they whinge and say they do not have enough slots and expect to be “given” more. Sigh..

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CrazyCanuck, christ, Bullfrog, DerekVH, Mark, Olneyflyer, AMcWhirter

[BackOfThePlane]

I’m guessing that Virgin don’t have a spare aircraft to utilise this slot? Otherwise, yes, pretty poor.

Would be great to know how much Emirates are paying them!

[LetsFlyNow]

I posted this a few days ago on the VS thread though it seems no one noticed or believed me. LOL

Today some slot transfer news were made known. I’m quoting a twitter account called London Air Travel. KLM is selling 10 weekly slots to Virgin. Virgin is leasing a daily slot to Emirates (expect a 7th daily rotation to DXB this summer). BA is leasing a daily AA remedy slot to Virgin Atlantic among others.
This information should be readily available. Yea, musical chairs with slots.

Will be interesting to see what Virgin does with the new slots – but i think these are the flight increases we had already read of.

And yes, i think that without additional planes VS can’t launch new routes.

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sparkyflier, Bullfrog, SimonS1, BackOfThePlane

[MarkivJ]

I’m not a fan of this, as sparkyflier mentioned – give away slots and then whinge about lack of slots. That said, their business development team must’ve really crunched the numbers and that the quick easy money coming in from EK is probably more advantageous than the investment in a new route (or additional slots for an existing one).

That said, per the other thread, sounds like VS got a slots from both BA (7x weekly) and KLM (10x daily) so they still get a good chunk in the end.

[Harbord1]

I am sure this is a very long term play by VAA. They will have something in mind for future schedules and until then the slots have to be flown by someone. Otherwise they will lose them. Lots of airlines do this at LHR.

[AMcWhirter]

Not forgetting, MarkivJ, the LHR slot which VS is gaining from Tarom – see the above postings.

(The above news was posted by media in Romania)

[AMcWhirter]

MarkivJ – apologies but I made a mistake with the thread.

Here is the piece re the Tarom slot at Heathrow. (Romanian only)

TAROM a vândut sloturile de la Heathrow cu 22 de milioane de lire sterline

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MarkivJ

[AndrewinHK]

In DXB’s latest update, the CEO confirmed Dubai-London remains the busiest city pair, with some 3.7 million passengers, ahead of number 2 which is Dubai-Riyahd with 2.6 million.

[Author]

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