[kiwibrit]

Penalties?? There would be far more significant penalties if they didn’t run these flights

Virgin had no choice but to run flights on these routes, as it was a condition of BA having to hand over the slots. The only reason they were able to drop one Manchester flight was because the slot was leased from another airline. The rest are all restricted to their current destinations. And if they didn’t run the flight, then they’d lose the slot.

Do your research!!

[BusinessBabble]

Yes penalties kiwibrit.

Regardless of the point you make above Little Red could:

(a) Do more to increase their loads – how about better advertising, lower prices, codeshare with other airlines, etc, etc.

OR

(b) Hand the slots back to BA who could potentially make better use of them.

Penalties for low loads in a slot constrained airport sounds like a good idea to me!

[SimonS1]

Yes well aware of that thanks Kiwibrit and the circumstances behind the ‘remedy’ slots.

It isn’t beyond the wit of man to sort out though. Regulator, airport and airlines get their heads together and say “basically this is a waste of capacity as slots are being wasted on small aircraft flying two thirds empty. Let’s have a rethink about how we can use the capacity more effectively”.

Of course in this country there are so many vested interests that it will never happen, but wasting capacity in this way demonstrates that Heathrow is not full.

[BusinessBabble]

BMI presumably managed to operate the flights with better loads?

[TimFitzgeraldTC]

Virgin Little Red do codeshare with a few airlines on the flights into LHR from MAN/EDI/ABZ so they are already doing this. They could perhaps codeshare with more.

The other thing they could do is have cheaper “fully” flexible fares rather than match at the same level as BA – missing a trick here.

[kiwibrit]

As a regular reader of this site, I’m fully aware of what people do and don’t know. I’m more concerned about the newbie readers happening upon posts like this and assuming opinion is fact.

Hand them back to BA? What a wonderful idea. They had to give up the slots because of monopoly, the very monopoly that allows them to spend copious amounts of cash promoting their monopoly.

They’re such difficult slots that they can’t do anything else with and VS is still in a financially difficult place, so all power to them for continuing to persevere. Should the regulator, airport and airline decide that the slots be better used for something else, then I’m sure monopoly air would be first to voice their complaint.

[dutchyankee]

There must be some missing posts in this thread as some of what is written doesn’t follow.

KiwiBrit, welcome to the forum. Curious about your calling BA ‘monopoly air,’ do you use the same for Lufthansa who are far more a monopoly at their hubs, or Air France with their complete monopoly at CDG, the list goes on. Actually, while BA undoubtedly has the most slots at LHR, the percentage compared to almost every other major carrier at their respective hubs is quite low, and hardly a monopoly.

[CXDiamond]

I think until Little Red do something to make their offering distinct they will continue to struggle. At the moment it seems that the service offering simply matches BA, why then would anyone want to book their services when they can book the same service on BA for the same price and get the same offering?

When BD came to the market all those years ago and brought competition they brought a service concept a few of us remember called Diamond Service which was excellent. Now that might not be practical in 2014 although it would cause a wow. Instead though why not bring flexibility to tickets at lower prices, access to a lounge for the majority, a decent sandwich or something, anything?

I do wonder if it’s part of Branson’s strategy for this to fail and then he will be able to use the slots for other things, but then he may not get to retain them.

[Raffles99]

For the last 3 months Virgin has been offering a status match to anyone flying Little Red who has BA Silver or Gold.

You also get 10,000 VS miles for a Gold match (plus a further 2,000 on your birthday) and 5,000 if Silver.

It’s a no-brainer for a BA Gold or Silver – I took a Little Red flight purely to get this.

[AMcWhirter]

For the forthcoming winter schedule, Little Red (according to the display on virgin-atlantic.com) is restoring its fourth daily LHR-MAN frequency.

Is this a “slot sitting” excercise for Delta ?

[rferguson]

I just fail to understand why VS didn’t make it a priority to join Skyteam when Delta took it’s stake. Initially the only feed it was getting was VS. Now with the Delta JV, DL too. If it joined Skyteam it would also have feed from Aeroflot, China Eastern, China Southern, Kenya, Korean etc. VS doesn’t even have a codeshare agreement with any of these airlines.

Can anyone guess why they are dragging their heels on joining an alliance?

[Raffles99]

Virgin should have bought bmi and joined Star. That chance will NEVER come again – Star is strong (Skyteam is full of losers, frankly) and VS would have feed from bmi plus Star partners. Star would have gained a home base at Heathrow.

The Virgin problem is simple though – long haul, it is poor once you get beyond the T3 experience. I don’t anyone who would voluntarily choose them over BA. That is the fundamental issue.

Short haul I think Little Red is fine especially as the planes are empty, but I still would fly it ex LHR as there is no lounge (even the Priority Pass option is dire).

T2 may or may not change things in 6 weeks. The lounge issue may still be there – if they use United Club it is a 30 minute round trip to Terminal 2B assuming the flights go off 2A.

[rferguson]

On reflection to my earlier post perhaps joining SkyTeam perhaps wouldn’t be the magic bullet. As you mention Raffles99 bmi had all the feed it could handle from it’s Star partners but still it couldn’t turn a decent profit.

I guess the devil is in the detail – how would the revenue on say PVG-LHR-ABZ on china eastern and Virgin be shared? I would guess Virgin would see very little of it. I remember bmi saying something along similar lines in regard to the longhaul/shorthaul split of revenue.

[rferguson]

On reflection to my earlier post perhaps joining SkyTeam perhaps wouldn’t be the magic bullet. As you mention Raffles99 bmi had all the feed it could handle from it’s Star partners but still it couldn’t turn a decent profit.

I guess the devil is in the detail – how would the revenue on say PVG-LHR-ABZ on china eastern and Virgin be shared? I would guess Virgin would see very little of it. I remember bmi saying something along similar lines in regard to the longhaul/shorthaul split of revenue.

[ZKSmith]

I doubt that gaining more SkyTeam code shares would help Little Red much at all, since CDG and AMS are huge SkyTeam hubs with excellent connections to most UK airports. Additionally, fares via these airports are usually cheaper than routing via LHR, and transiting through them is easier than at LHR.

I remember a few years that if I was travelling to Europe it was often cheapest for me to fly EDI – LHR with BMI, with onward connections from LHR on one of their Star Alliance partners. Today Little Red has almost no short haul code shares. The fact that Easyjet and Ryanair now offer many more direct flights ex EDI can’t be helping connecting traffic either.

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