As we all are aware, Virgin Atlantic has confirmed is first set of routes to serve London Heathrow to Manchester.
Virgin have proposed the second tranche of flights that will serve the London Heathrow to Edinburgh and London to Aberdeen. However, unlike its first tranche of flights that will operate using existing Virgin slots these flights will be operated from the “remedy slots” that International Airlines Group (British Airways) had to give up to allow the purchase of British Midland Airways.
Service commencement will be dependant if the European Commission grants the slots to Virgin Atlantic.
Virgin has placed a bid for all the slots pairs (a total of 12 arrival and departure slots), with Virgin taking 7 of the 12 for domestic purposes. The exact split between Aberdeen and Edinburgh has yet to be decided.
The airline will lease three Airbus A319s for the proposed domestic services on a “wet lease” contract.
A lot of the success of the Virgin domestic operation will come down to timings and how they integrate with existing Virgin services and how long Virgin can bankroll the services for….
This takes me back many years.
I used to travel regularly on business day trips to Edinburgh from London, and occasionally Manchester and Glasgow. BA was the only airline serving the route and it was a cattle car.
Then British Midland started competing, offering full breakfasts / lunch / dinner and superb service. BA’s response was the shuttle, together with food and the promise of back up planes (which never materialised) if the first was too full.
Slowly, as we know, BA pushed British Midland out of the routes and the service is a shadow of its former self.
Roll on Virgin and let the clock go round again.