Virgin wins Heathrow slots to fly to Scotland!

Am I right in thinking the above had a typo error. Did you mean “two options on the table”?:)

Touche!!:o

Does the 1.5 million not include those travelling to/from MAN as well as EDI and ABZ?

It’s great for passengers – more choice, more competition, lower fares 🙂

But, what the hell is VS thinking – do they honestly think it will be profitable? Maybe if they didn’t employ their annalists from London Metropolitan, they might see more sense?

A quote from today’s FT “Some analysts have expressed doubts about the decision to move into the highly-competitive, short-haul market. Large network operators, such as BA, have struggled to make short-haul operations profitable in the face of fierce competition from low-cost carriers, such as EasyJet and Ryanair.
But the Virgin’s management rejects those suggestions, pointing out that BMI used to provide valuable feeder traffic to Virgin Atlantic’s long-haul flights at Heathrow. It estimates its nascent short-haul network could generate 1.5m feeder passengers per year.”

1.5 million passengers a year? 😮 I’m no mathematician, but let’s do the maths.
1.5m ÷ 365 = 4110 passengers per day.
(Let’s assume each new Virgin A319 can carry ~140 passengers each)
4110 ÷ 140 = ~29 flights per day.

…Excuse me, but didn’t Virgin gain 12 slot pairs (24 slots)? Either VS is over-estimating, or something doesn’t add up…

There were no options on the table – take it or leave it.

Am I right in thinking the above had a typo error. Did you mean “two options on the table”?:)

To be fair to cloud_9 I think he means that in the sense that it was Hobson’s choice. No slots if you want the deal. There were no options on the table – take it or leave it.

You make it sound like BA only let the slots go, kicking and screaming.

They were not FORCED. Giving up the slots was part of the deal. IAG decided to go ahead with the deal, so IAG/BA OPTED to give up the slots.