Virgin Atlantic’s plans for Flybe revealed in the official scheme document

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• Mr(s) Entitled says:

  8 Feb8 February 08:54

  I would be very surprised if the document were to conclude that Flybe was operational, had a potential future, and could have possibly achieved a better exit for shareholders through Administration.

  Virgin from Man only fly direct to MCO, JFK, LAX, LAS, BOS, BGI, ATL. and a code share on Jetairways to BOM. No Delta flights.

  In fairness, they are Virgin ATLANTIC but hopefully this might lead to an increased MAN presence.

• Fred says:

  8 Feb8 February 08:58

  No mention of a Loyalty scheme? I only use Flybe as my company sanction it. We loathe Virgin but I guess we’ll see what happens. Trains are usually more reliable on Flybe domestic network anyway. Hope the Flybe staff jobs are safe.

  • Shoestring says:

    8 Feb8 February 09:03

    ‘Flybe can confirm that, with effect from 30 April 2019, we will no longer be an Avios partner and that after this date customers will no longer be able to collect or spend Avios with us.
    Until the closure of the programme on 30 April, customers can still spend Avios and redeem them for Flybe flights operating through October, as well as on the wide range of reward flights, hotels, car hire and other travel experiences on avios.com.‘For further information on what happens to Avios after 30 April 2019 customers are advised to contact Avios directly. Meanwhile, we are working on a new loyalty programme offering, the details of which will be shared when finalised.’

    • rob says:

      8 Feb8 February 10:37

      As somebody based in the South West, I feel that the air routes from NQY will prosper due to how bad the new Hitachi trains are from Paddington to Penzance. So uncomfortable! Thids would encourage me to fly the route rather than get trains, even if they are often more reliable.

      Maybe such a route will prosper for Virgin consortiums new takeover. I will watch with interest.

      • Shoestring says:

        8 Feb8 February 11:11

        my kids are far from impressed, & that’s only 90 mins/ day 🙂

  • David says:

    8 Feb8 February 11:05

    “Trains are usually more reliable on Flybe domestic network anyway.”

    Try taking a train from Inverness to Belfast !

• Mike says:

  8 Feb8 February 09:03

  The position of having UK and EU(Irish) AOCs might just be an incredible strength depending on what happens at the end of March (are FR guaranteed to be allowed to fly domestically in the UK on their Irish only AOC if there is no deal?)

  • John says:

    8 Feb8 February 09:27

    That’s up to the UK govt, there doesn’t need to be a deal

  • marcw says:

    8 Feb8 February 11:35

    Ryanair has recently acquired an UK AOC, so domestic flights should be ok.

  • Alex Sm says:

    8 Feb8 February 22:56

    There is a provision on this in both UK and EU no-deal planning, a so-called “bare bones agreement”. I recently wrote on this for a work project

• Simon says:

  8 Feb8 February 09:04

  Seems like quite a broad update.
  ‘Enhanced’ could mean literally anything, but reckon it could become more MAN focused. The rest of it, I’d expect loss-making routes to be culled aggressively.
  Don’t think there will be ever huge profits in it for the medium term, but as one big flying advertisement for Virgin it could make sense.

  • Shoestring says:

    8 Feb8 February 09:06

    hub & spoke

• Travel Strong says:

  8 Feb8 February 09:18

  The back end operations and philosophies will need to be burnt to the ground and built back up with Virgin style customer satisfaction focus, rather than short sighted flight cancellations due to loads. Continuing the Flymaybe logic would destroy Virgin’s image.

  • Pierre says:

    8 Feb8 February 10:20

    And completely overhaul their GDS/DCScontract , as Flybe was in the process of migrating to Altea, which Virgin doesn’t use according to public sources

• Callum says:

  8 Feb8 February 09:19

  Because Little Red was a brand new airline? This is an existing airline that already has a customer base.

  • Rob says:

    8 Feb8 February 09:33

    What is true, though, is that Little Red was a) very pleasant to fly, b) went into Heathrow, c) sold tickets very cheaply and d) was throwing massive bribes at people, eg a BA Gold card holder was given a Virgin Gold card for taking one Little Red flight.

    And it still failed….

    • Andrew says:

      8 Feb8 February 10:24

      You missed out:-

      (e) Forgot that the “Bread & Butter” of the EDI-London route was the Domestic passenger, not the Heathrow connections.

      This was the evening return timetable:-

      VS3009 LHR1625 – 1755EDI
      VS3011 LHR1950 – 2120EDI

      The 16:25 was too early for a day’s business in London.
      The 19:50 was too late back.

      With Flybe serving both London City & Heathrow, it’s a more flexible

      17:40 & 19:15 from LCY
      &
      18:20 & 20:45 from Heathrow

    • David says:

      8 Feb8 February 15:23

      Andrew, I’d agree with that, but FlyBe then throw away their opportunity to capitalise on this by using small noisy propeller planes on these routes rather than their Embraers.

    • Oh Matron! says:

      8 Feb8 February 16:34

      It depends on what your requirements were to begin with. I flew regularly with Virgin Little Red (Man-LHR) and towards the end, the flights were 90-95% capacity

      That, to me, wasn’t a failure.

      Now, if Virgin / Delta wanted them as a feeder to Trans atlantic flights from the provincials, then, yes, a complete failure. This was somewhat Naive, it has to be said. Virgin had a fantastic opportunity to provide real competition to the monopoly that BA hold on routes like LHR-MAN, and should have used this as a measure as well as the feeder requirement

    • Chris L says:

      8 Feb8 February 18:36

      The Dash 8s aren’t that bad on a short flight. The small size means 2×2 seating and you get on and off quickly. Yes, the Embraers are more pleasant but most business travellers on short haul want their flight at the right time and don’t care about the aircraft type. Most other considerations are secondary.
      Little Red failed partly because they were wet leasing from Aer Lingus at high cost. This won’t be the case with Flybe.
      Will be interesting to see what they do with the substantial route network Flybe babe from Birmingham.

    • Stu N says:

      8 Feb8 February 19:49

      “eg a BA Gold card holder was given a Virgin Gold card for taking one Little Red flight.“

      Pricks up ears…. 🙂

      • Rob says:

        8 Feb8 February 22:20

        Did it, got it – https://headforpoints.com/2014/06/24/virgin-flying-club-little-red-status-match/

    • Stu N says:

      8 Feb8 February 23:12

      I wasn’t flying much at that time but did maybe half a dozen Little Red flights while they operated. They had better bacon rolls than BA in the morning and Bombay Sapphire instead of Gordon’s Gin for the return and were in no way shy about handing them out.

      Plus, they were v cheap and the loads on EDI-LHR were so poor you often got a row to yourself.

      Commercial suicide, but for a passenger it was great while it lasted (much like BMI, really).

• Scottydogg says:

  8 Feb8 February 09:33

  Flybe dont seem to be doing themselves any favours at the moment , hitting everyone for charges to check-in their slightly over sized carry on bags , bags that used to be fine to bring on.
  Is this just one last ditch attempt at getting some money into the bank to keep the lights on ?

  • Rob says:

    8 Feb8 February 09:34

    Hard to see it as anything else.

• chris1922 says:

  8 Feb8 February 09:35

  Slightly off topic, but related.

  My regular Avios.com account has now been closed; last week I flew BHX – GLA with Flybe. Where do my Avios go ? There was a double Avios promo on. As it happens, I only had 1 solitary Avios in my account, as I had regularly been “combining” them. What happens to it ?
  Also, if I was to collect regular Avios via e-rewards or Rewards for thoughts (as I used to do), where do they go ?
  Nothing has appeared in my BAEC as yet, over a week now.

  • Louise says:

    8 Feb8 February 10:35

    My Avios closed last week too and had 3k in there from my Lloyd’s card. Hasn’t transferred to my BAEC so I’m going to ring them up

  • raikje says:

    8 Feb8 February 10:40

    I spoke to them about this. The Flybe Avios will end up in your Avios.com account, and they say they are doing regular sweeps of the closed accounts to move things across to your BAEC account. In my case, that is a second BA account they erroneously set up for me, so the transfer will in turn be merged into my normal BAEC balance. In theory…!

    Don’t expect the Avios from your Flybe flight to turn up any time soon though, normally takes about a month.

    You can always phone them up, the person I spoke to at Avios.com was very helpful and could see all the activity (and the orphaned Avios) on my ‘closed’ account.

    • chris1922 says:

      8 Feb8 February 11:09

      Lovely, thanks for update. Both erewards and rewards for thoughts said I would be able to link their rewards to BAEC Avios, but not seen any evidence of that yet.

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