This is indeed a sad development but moreover one that signals it is unlikely we'll see any direct competition on the LHR domestic routes. Clearly, a huge driver of BA's popularity on the domestic routes to LHR is the onward connectivity, which accounts for a huge proportion of the traffic on these routes...
I suspect we won't see a rival on these domestics until another runway appears...
True enough, but it may be "if" rather than "until" as the 50 year era of indecision, dither and procrastination continues................
Probably a missed opportunity!
VS had no USP and brought with it a longhaul upper class mindset! If it was intended purely as a feeder service, maybe they should have been offering last minute point to point tickets at a knock down price? Surely that would have been better than flying empty seats. Good
PR too!
Definitely a lost opportunity, all this "little red" nonsense. No one understood what this was about. Might it not have been better to market it as VS rather than what may appear to some to be a new and separate carrier?
So do the LHR slots now go back to BA and if so does anyone know what they intend to do with them?
If no one else comes forward to run these services and this looks unlikely, then yes, the slots revert to BA. With a bit of luck we'll see some longhaul expansion to somewhere other than North America.