Originally Posted by
airsouthwest
What I never understood is if Virgin wanted Flybe to become a Virgin brand, why buy it when you could have just given them a US style franchise, Virgin control the costs, the routs, the branding, customer services etc, Flybe still keep their AOC and would have stayed afloat. I still think the only reason they bought Flybe was for the Heathrow slots, the coronavirus amongst other things scuppered that.
However once this is all over we are still going to have a massive hole in regional connectivity, whilst Loganair & Blue Islands might have filled some of those flights, they will be in a very weak position as will all airlines, I wouldn't be surprised to see Loganair, Eastern & Blue Islands merge or join together in some sort of way.
I know Heathrow slots are valuable but it seems a lot of trouble to go to for slots that would not have belonged to them. I can't see Cyrus capital letting them have them for free. They'd have to have paid for them somehow either through purchase or leasing if either were possible as Cyrus would've wanted a return on their investment.
Personally I think that Virgin just bit off more than they could chew.