Virgin at Manchester

Virgin Atlantic - Are they aggressive enough at Manchester?

It’s no secret, the past 2 years have been a tough slog for Manchester Airport. First off, the pandemic. It’s literally been a ‘hard reset’ on global routes and Manchester was not immune from that. It was identified as one of the worst affected airports in Europe as far as passenger numbers go, and its had to fight hard for its passengers given its a predominantly outbound market, a market that has been scarred by restrictions, testing and the threats of hotel quarantine on return from destinations.

And outside of that pandemic, the USA and Caribbean have been 2 markets particularly affected in those 2 years. It started with Thomas Cook entering bankruptcy. This instantly wiped San Fransisco, Las Vegas, Cayo Coco, Montego Bay, Antigua, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Varadero and Seattle off the map, no scheduled flights to Cancún or Punta Cana, while leaving New York, Orlando and Los Angeles underserved. Then Manchester was dealt another blow when United announced it was leaving the Newark-Manchester route ‘permanently’ after 25+ years of service. The final hammer blow was another long standing route, Philadelphia also being cut by American Airlines.

But the one bastion that remained in the face of these losses, was Virgin Atlantic. Virgin have served Manchester since the 1990’s when they added the A340-300 to their fleet, and began Orlando flights. Right up until recently, Virgin saw Manchester as a purely leisure base alongside Gatwick, and shared their airline fleet between the 2 airports. Routes from Manchester into the 2010’s didn’t stray from the likes of Orlando, Las Vegas, Bridgetown and a brief stint on St.Lucia.

However, the tie-up with Delta Airlines brought in a new era of Virgin routes from Manchester, with the latter taking over the Atlanta and New York JFK routes from Delta. And then, in 2017, routes to San Fransisco and Boston were announced (and both have been subsequently dropped). 

Virgin Atlantic now serve 7 routes from Manchester:

-New York JFK

-Bridgetown

-Orlando

-Los Angeles

-Montego Bay

-Atlanta

-Islamabad 

Delhi and Mumbai have both been announced and put on sale in the past, but covid prevented these routes from starting.

So, history and current routes explained, what’s the point of this article?

It’s no surprise that Virgin Atlantic was a major competitor to Thomas Cook, and many expected Virgin to be a little more aggressive in ‘securing the market’ upon the formers demise. But surprisingly, they haven’t.

Now, one could blame a few reasons for this. Their financial situation has never been what can be described as ‘stellar’. They also have a fairly constrained fleet and then the dreaded C-word took hold not long after Thomas Cooks demise. One could also argue that Virgin didn’t expect any competition to enter the market. I mean, let’s face it, Norwegian were already bowing out of long haul, British Airways have not shown much interest in regional long haul since 2005, and the US carriers have since pulled Manchester operations.

But then, Aer Lingus hit the scene. When they initially announced their intention to serve U.K.-TATL, many brushed it off as a negotiating tactic against the unions. But low and behold, a U.K. AOC was obtained, Manchester was selected and routes have been put on sale. With all 3 current Aer Lingus routes being Virgin Atlantic routes, this is where the question of ‘are Virgin Atlantic being as aggressive as they could be at Manchester?’ Is formed. Could they secure more of the ex-Thomas routes before another carrier (such as perhaps Norse Atlantic or another carrier like Jet2 taking the plunge on long haul) take these routes?

With Virgin Holidays backing, I firmly believe routes to Cancún, Las Vegas, Punta Cana and Havana are all low hanging fruit for Virgin Atlantic, while adding in Delhi and Mumbai could bring in eastern connections to the USA as well as local VFR. Las Vegas in particular is a surprise given it had an average load factor of 87% in August 2019 (which was the last full month Thomas Cook were in operation). The route was served 3 weekly in 2018 by Virgin, with plans for 6 weekly in 2020. When covid hit, it was completely cut, with virgin claiming it was massively unprofitable (but the doubling of frequency and high load factors makes this a little hard to believe to be honest). With a ‘monopoly’ on Manchester-Las Vegas, Virgin could find it very comfortable on the route going forward.

In terms of one of the problems with its fleet constraints to serve these extra routes, there is a very simple solution that could instantly free up 2 A330. Bring Manchester-Atlanta and New York back under Delta control.

With these 2 A330, you could easily have aircraft 1 doing 3 weekly Las Vegas, 2 weekly Havana and 2 weekly Cancún. Aircraft 2 could operate 2 weekly JFK (add capacity to DL), 2 weekly Punta Cana and 3 weekly Delhi (Mumbai could be on the ISB aircraft as shown below).

Based ops could be;

1- A330 on 7 weekly MCO

2- A330 on 3 weekly LAX and 3 weekly BGI

3- A330 on 5 weekly MCO and 2 weekly EDI-MCO

4- A330 on 4 weekly ISB and 3 weekly BOM

5- A330 on 3 weekly LAS, 2 weekly HAV and 2 weekly CUN

6- A330 on 2 weekly JFK, 2 weekly PUJ and 3 weekly DEL

Delta could run Atlanta, Boston and New York Daily.

Above: the combined VS/DL/AF/KL/SQ network potential.

With 6 aircraft based, Delta running potentially 3 routes and partners such as KLM and Air France serving Manchester, not to mention codeshares with Singapore Airlines on 2 routes, it could be a very robust operation at Manchester supported by key infrastructure like the new clubhouse.

So, are Virgin as aggressive at Manchester as they could be, my answer is no, they could be much more aggressive. What do you think? Let me know.