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Old 22nd Aug 2011, 15:46
  #97 (permalink)  
Skipness One Echo
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
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I personally think MAN will feature heavily in VA future expansion plans.
VA is V Australia, but you never know.....

From starting ops in 1997, they've had MCO, added BGI in winter 2005, seasonal UVF in winter 2006 (since dropped) and LAS this summer.
All of these used to be sold heavily on BMI out of MAN with Virgin Holidays so beyond the "beach fleet" destinations currently served out of out of LGW, I would see NO expansion out of MAN for VS.

They can't do US destinations as the US carriers have them sewn up out of MAN and are struggling with overcapacity to a Europe struggling economically so yields are down. Looking East, the over capacity increase on EK / EY / QR would make that commercial suicide as they couldn't match price on a direct daily service versus a one stop via the gulf hubs.

That leaves from the beach fleet destinations :

KIN (being dropped out of LGW so unlikely)
MBJ
ANU / UVF possibly more viable on the A333
GND / TAB
HAV
SJU

In all honesty, the best VS will ever do out of MAN is daily (double daily some days) to Orlando and a based A333 doing a suite of once / twice weekly from the above. I cannot foresee any business case for that airline to do anything beyond that. Certainly point to point outside of London Heathrow looks impossible alas.
(unless of course the shiny new B787 does actually "change everything" which seems unlikely in the extreme, it'll just be way more efficient doing most of the current things!)
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