Things may not be all well with Virgin Atlantic’s Little Red service, with a service cut occurring next year – with the Manchester to London Heathrow route dropping from four flights a day to three flights a day.
The lunch-time service is being trimmed, with morning and evening services remaining.
London Heathrow to Manchester VS3041 DEPART LHR 09:30 ARRIVE MAN 10:30 VS3043 DEPART LHR 17:10 ARRIVE MAN 18:10 VS3045 DEPART LHR 20:10 ARRIVE MAN 21:10 Manchester to London Heathrow VS3046 DEPART MAN 07:50 ARRIVE LHR 09:00 VS3042 DEPART MAN 12:20 ARRIVE LHR 13:30 VS3044 DEPART MAN 18:50 ARRIVE LHR 20:00 Booked Equipment: Airbus A320 (operated by Aer Lingus) Commences 30th March 2014
Load performance has not been good according to Business Traveller, with the 4th flight using a loaned slot pair.
As well as fighting for connecting traffic from British Airways, Little Red also faces competition from Virgin Trains who operate a Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston link (which operates a lot more often, and provides a centre-to-centre link).
UK Domestic services have always been a tough sell – be it for point to point or connecting traffic. Something that BMI knew, and that Virgin Atlantic is learning about the hard way…
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I think VS has always known these flights would be bloody, but counted that as the cost of obtaining the slots during the bmi merger.
After a few years they will have the slots permanently and can redeploy to more profitable routes… I’m most surprised that they’ve flown the route more often than required to keep it!