It seems the influence of Delta is being made more apparent with Virgin Atlantic taking an axe to four of its long haul services that don’t serve the USA.
Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747-400 at London Heathrow T3, Image GhettoIFE
These include routes from London to:
- Cape Town (seasonal) last outbound on 26 April 2015 and the final flight from Cape Town to London on 27 April 2015
- Tokyo Narita, last outbound on 31 January 2015 and the final flight from Narita to London on 01 February 2015
- Vancouver (seasonal) last outbound/return on 11 October 2014
- Mumbai, last outbound on 31 January 31st 2015 and the final flight from Mumbai to London on 01 February 2015
Let’s not dance around the subject – this one heck of a cut to Virgin Atlantic’s long haul network. This leaves the following destinations from the UK that don’t go near the US or Caribbean:
- Hong Kong
- Shanghai
- Dubai
- Johannesburg
- Lagos
- Delhi
Virgin Network map – http://vs.fltmaps.com/en/gb
Virgin Atlantic is trying to keep a presence in some countries, removing duplication where possible. In terms of new services that will be filling in for the withdrawn services, it’s a lot of US-bound traffic, including
- A new daily service between London Heathrow to Detroit
- Additional daily service between London Heathrow to New York-JFK
- Additional daily service from London Heathrow to Los Angeles
- An additional summer season additional daily flight between London Heathrow to Atlanta
- An additional summer season 5 times weekly service between London Heathrow to San Francisco
- An additional daily service between London Heathrow to Miami during the winter season
- Manchester to Atlanta swill switch to Virgin Atlantic operation on a daily operation
- A London Heathrow to Newark International service will switch from Virgin Atlantic to Delta
- Delta will also operate a daily operation between Manchester and New York JFK in Summer 2015
A rather US centric set of services there with the freed up flights, aimed at delivering Virgin Atlantic hard cash and profit – and feeding mostly into Delta hubs for those who require onward flights to other destinations.
In addition, this feeds into the joint business venture across the Atlantic with Delta – to try to challenge the dominance of British Airways/American Airline and United Airlines.
Will there be more axes wielded on the route network? I wouldn’t put it past Virgin Atlantic (with a little pressure from its 49% share holder Delta) to wield the axe further in the future, depending on the demand, utilisation and if the route is actually making money.
It seems that Virgin Atlantic is going to live up to its name of taking passengers just across the Atlantic if some routes don’t perform better.
And that would be a shame – the UK does need competition to British Airways in the long haul sector. Removing international destinations from its network and boosting links to the USA is hardly the way to do it.
Or, it I’m being blunt, the next time some Virgin Atlantic planes enter the paint shop, I wouldn’t be surprised if a Delta widget was painted on them…
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GhettoIFE – great points. I’m really confused on what the play for DL is. Did they just want to buy slots at LHR and have more feed to the UK? Virgin Atlantic provides minimal connectivity beyond LHR for US-originating passengers. The connection times at LHR are often horrible.
I just can’t imagine that there is a huge underserved US – LHR market out there. AA and BA are already operating a massive amount of US – LHR capacity. With APD and Passenger Service Charges so high in the UK, I don’t see there being a huge bump in tourist demand from the US to the UK as much as I love the latter too 🙂
Do you know the yields and load factors for these routes? I have been on the YVR flight and it was VERY empty while the LAX flight was book solid in Y and J.
US-LHR is huge. VS brings to DL the UK POS, premium services and brand loyalty. Network wise this is just a different paint flying the route, since its metal-neutral anyway.
BA has enough competition going east, it’s called Emirates. BA survives because of North American feed and the AA network. VS is doing a smaller version of that with DL.
Not many will choose to connect in LHR when there are cheaper hubs everywhere (DL will certainly rather push connections through AMS)
BA is now the only carrier serving CPT from LHR down from 3 a few years ago.