Virgin Atlantic’s Little Red – no more?

Virgin Atlantic has been trying to boost its UK capacity by the introduction of Little Red – its response for British Airways taking over British Midland – and wet leasing Aer Lingus aircraft to operate services on its behalf to Manchester, Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

Virgin Atlantic Little Red Airbus A320 – Image GhettoIFE.

However the past 18 months of operations have not been kind to the Little Red unit, with its passenger numbers, and the airline attacked from above (by British Airways on connecting and direct Heathrow traffic) and below (by EasyJet and Ryanair who compete on city pairs).

According to the Sunday Times, Virgin Atlantic are looking to close their Little Red unit (Paywall)

Loads have been reported with planes running at 37.6% capacity during 2013.

And that isn’t a way to run an airline.

Consider also the size of Virgin Atlantic’s international network – or the shrinking footprint of it. To sustain a domestic network requires a reasonable sized network with well timed connections, and the feed from the international network just isn’t doing it in any sense of the term.

Whilst some will argue this airline was just a slot sitting exercise, Virgin Atlantic had gained a fair amount of “remedy slots”, obtained from the sale of British Midland to British Airways, with certain slots allocated for services to destinations (twelve slots). This includes some of the slots used for Little Red to operate its services with.

Whilst twelve slot pairs at Heathrow are worth a lot, you have to wonder if that’s worth keeping a struggling service up and running to retain those slots.

There’s another elephant in the room – according to The Telegraph, Virgin Atlantic was happy with the “growing loads”, why is pulling going to pull the plug?

Or is another widget shaped force at play? Whilst Virgin Atlantic is trying to turn itself around, with a re-focus on Trans-Alantic routes, it would be impossible to think that all parties have been looking at what has been bleeding cash and what could be cut.

Maybe this is the ultimate fate of Little Red – not pulling in the passengers or making the cash equals the cut.

For now, until a formal announcement is made, this is one to monitor as the situation changes.

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