Originally Posted by
Husky One
You can make statistics say anything you want but in reality an A330 is far cheaper to operate than a 744, cabins can be easily retrofitted and will be as the old fleet retires, a 78% LF based on a few flights in peak season doesn’t really tell you much compared to a half year operation. What virgin have failed to appreciate is the fine tuning of the price point beyond which people will trundle towards Dub. The VS product is no longer sufficiently different to stop that. So many airlines fail to understand our market.
The fact is that Virgin's A333s are used on their business routes. Sure, you can retrofit them to have a leisure configuration, but then what would Virgin operate on their key business routes? There's no chance that they'd retrofit the B744s to operate them on business routes (potentially at a loss) for just a couple of years before retiring them.
Virgin's current business model is to use the B744 on leisure routes, and the A333, A346 and B789 on their business routes. Virgin aren't going to change their entire business model just because it *could possibly* benefit one seasonal route. You need to look at the bigger picture - the B744s will be retired in a couple of years, with the A350-1000 pegged to replace them. Yes, the B744 is slightly too big for BFS, but a more suitable aircraft, configured with a leisure cabin, will be available in just a few years.
Plus; by using the B744 for all MCO operations, it means that there are fewer positioning flights. Throughout the whole season, VS will only need to fly two empty positioning flights (LGW-BFS on the first day of the schedule, and BFS-LGW on the last day). If the A333 was used instead, VS would need to fly the aircraft empty LHR-BFS and BFS-LHR every single week. That's a wholly inefficient way of operating the BFS flights.
Also, the fact that VS have increased their BFS offering every year since the route's inception clearly shows that the airline is content with the amount of money it's making.