And the new Flybe brand will be ….

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• Oh! Matron! says:

  15 Oct15 October 14:17

  Would Flybe be a good candidate for the A220? I realise VS are likely to sweat the ATRs for a while, but it would be a good synergy. I see Luxair, airBaltic, etc all looking….

  • Rhys says:

    15 Oct15 October 14:23

    I was thinking this, but the A220 is quite a bit larger than Q400 – more than 50 seats bigger….I guess it depends if they foresee growth. Presumably they do, otherwise Virgin wouldn’t have taken a stake in them.

    • Stu N says:

      15 Oct15 October 14:46

      Don’t see it – they are ditching Embraer 195s for smaller E175s. The A220 is significantly bigger than the E195 so would be an odd direction to go in at the moment.

      I have the misfortune to use FlyBe pretty regularly and they need all the help they can get. Punctuality has improved a lot since the spring but they are just a bit rubbish, delays are not well communicated, pretty poor website, non-functioning app, their planes are a total mixed bag of interiors and liveries and cabin crew are not that great.

      • Rhys says:

        15 Oct15 October 14:52

        That was before the Virgin take over, however….

  • Doug M says:

    15 Oct15 October 14:50

    On the V-Flyer forum they’re lining this with Virgin/Flybe https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/a220-deal-helps-lift-airbus-net-orders-total-above-1-461320/

  • Philip says:

    16 Oct16 October 07:20

    Probably not – https://www.businesstraveller.com/business-travel/2019/10/15/swiss-cancels-flights-as-a220s-grounded-for-technical-inspections/

• Jon says:

  15 Oct15 October 14:40

  So, with Connect in the name, they must be targeting the domestic connections market, to connect with Virgin long-haul. So they need to make this work financially, where Little Red didn’t. But I struggle to see how the Dash8 fleet will be attractive. I took one edi-lhr and it took so long, I’ve gone back to BA domestic, even when connecting to VS long haul.

  • Rhys says:

    15 Oct15 October 14:42

    No reason why ‘Connect’ means only domestic connections…..

  • Bigglesgirl says:

    15 Oct15 October 16:36

    On the basis they’re pulling shed loads of services from BHX and other minor airports “Connect” clearly does not mean connecting anywhere. I sincerely hope this route removal is temporary otherwise I will no choice of going anywhere from my local airport.

    • Rob says:

      15 Oct15 October 18:09

      Leaving the planes parked up for a few months is more sensible than flying them on loss-making routes.

      Lots of interesting insights today. There was an EU261 comment which interested me. Many people think that filling planes at marginal cost (let’s say £5 + taxes) is worth it, because you get the potential for ancilliary revenue on top and it is better than getting nothing. However, EU261 turns these calculations on their head. An empty seat will not be claiming a few hundred Euro if the plane gets delayed or cancelled.

• Alex says:

  15 Oct15 October 15:06

  For me, the number one thing that BA has above Virgin is their European network. But VS can’t currently compete, especially from LHR, for lack of slots. If/when Virgin Connect can start emulating that, BA will have to become competitive again.

• Little Pansey says:

  15 Oct15 October 15:18

  Use Virgin points?

• BJ says:

  15 Oct15 October 15:24

  I think they would have been better rebranding Virgin Atlantic as Virgin Connect and simply calling this one Virgin. Let’s be honest, Virgin Atlantic is almost a non-airlihe, little use for anything these days except flights to the USA and transferring miles to Hilton.

  • TGLoyalty says:

    15 Oct15 October 16:45

    if their only use is crossing the Atlantic isn’t Virgin Atlantic the perfect name?

    • BJ says:

      15 Oct15 October 17:30

      Except they don’t just cross the Atlantic.

      • Chrisasaurus says:

        16 Oct16 October 10:56

        It sounds like you have both sides of the argument covered then – shall we leave you to it? 😋

    • Peter K says:

      15 Oct15 October 17:47

      😁 My thought exactly!

  • The Savage Squirrel says:

    15 Oct15 October 17:10

    Well yes, if you don’t want or need to cross the atlantic then Virgin ATLANTIC (clue is in the name) is probably not the right airline for you. 😀 :D.

• TripRep says:

  15 Oct15 October 16:05

  Be interesting to see connections to Manchester from the Highlands using miles redeeming on a single ticket.

  Maybe we will finally hear something before Xmas?

  • BJ says:

    15 Oct15 October 16:34

    I tried to get a through redemption on CX using avios a few times without success so hopefully FC can do better. You might get even luckier with FC miles on KLM but I am not optimistic value will be good.

    • Lady London says:

      15 Oct15 October 21:38

      I think the reason is that even if you are using avios, the operating airline must ‘publish’ the route you are flying.i.e. adknowledge it as a route, and attach things to it that make it bookable.

      I remember having this problem whilst trying to use up some final miles of the small stash I got from BD (I came far, far too late to this hobby!)… Someone in BD explained that my chosen route from somewhere like Nice to Portland, had not been “published” by the airline and so even though the segments were there and available, as the airline flying the first segment had not “published” a fare for that route then it coiuldn’t be ticketed.

      Perhaps someone on here may know more about this but it sounds why you couldn’t get a through ticketing for your routing including domestic on Cathay on one ticket?

• marcw says:

  15 Oct15 October 16:25

  What are the chances of Virgin Connect to success, besides from some little feeding? I can’t see them building a massive European network. Most interesting slots have been taken already. They are going to have pretty strong low cost competition (even more than now). And finally, KLM does connect pretty much the whole UK with world destinations via their super efficient AMS hub – so what’s the real value behind it? Shouldn’t they focus on making Virgin Atlantic a valuable an interesting player in LHR (and not just UK-USA Delta shuttle?)

  • Rob says:

    15 Oct15 October 18:13

    70% of Flybe routes have no competition. They are monopolies – however, just because you have a monopoly on, say, Exeter to Dusseldorf doesn’t mean you can fill a 78 seat plane once a day ….

    • Stu N says:

      15 Oct15 October 21:38

      From Edinburgh, they have no head-to-head competition on most of their routes – Birmingham, East Midlands and Manchester will be up against rail. Exeter, Southampton and Newquay have no realistic completion unless you want to spend 8-10 hours on a train. Belfast City and Cardiff are up against Easyjet to Belfast Intl and Bristol respectively. They have a niche, just not exactly a profitable one.

      Heathrow and City compete with BA; Heathrow is possibly slot-sitting, they would need jets to properly compete and for City they compete with BA on price. The Q400 props are bumpy, noisy planes – the Q must be a reference to outside noise, not cabin noise – but they are cheap to buy and run. The A220 could be a fit for Heathrow – indeed it’s almost a necessity for connecting traffic.

      The other problem is that if Flybe can grow a route to a decent scale, Easyjet or Ryanair will swoop in and eat FlyBe’s lunch. There’s not much they can do about that without bigger planes, again which is where the A220 could come in.

      Will be interesting to see how this plays out – personally I’m hoping for a BA Gold => VS Gold status match, that would be nice!

    • Marcw says:

      15 Oct15 October 22:31

      Regional routes (outside London) are not profitable anywhere in Europe. There’s either too much train competition or there’s not enough demand to sustain a profitable route.

• Simon says:

  15 Oct15 October 16:32

  Rob,
  Appreciate there are limits on what you can report today but it would be interesting to have a background article in the next few weeks on their plans (to the limits their press team will let you). e.g. given slot constraints in LHR will they focus growth on LGW, MAN and AMS/CDG to feed DL/VS (and AF/KL) long-haul? Or do they plan to be point-to-point and if connections are possible then they’re a bonus? What are their plans around non DL/VS/sky team codeshares (both taking others’ flight numbers and putting theirs on others’)? Any plans for the cabin/classes?
  Thanks.

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