Nonsense. There isn't room, given the mixture of local, freight, and express trains.

Like they are at the moment?

You’ve obviously never been on the West Coast line - standing room only and it has to support local services. You would have to be a magician to put more trains on those tracks 😂

As another poster has mentioned it’s the same companies that are now asking for support that were screaming when it looked like Flybe would get support apart from SRB who again was looking for free money from the Government.

A reply
 

How much of this potential support will go straight onto the pockets of the Lease Companies who actually own a substantial proportion of the Airlines fleet's (Not just Virgin of course) .

CAT III

Wow! The lack of awareness of that remark is amazing....

A number of keen observations made. I had served for 43 years in the aviation industry and wish serving colleagues the very best in this dire situation. However, I am opposed to to government bail outs! In particular as at this time and for the immediate future we do not know what we are going to be bailing out, I would rather see the monies helping those that will inevitably lose their jobs in general not just in aviation. The fiscal global market is on the brink for the majority of us!

... normally I'd agree with you, but I'm sure in your 43 year career, you've not seen anything as chaotic and desperate as this. And that includes 9/11.

Given the ability of airlines like Delta, AA and BA to survive previous events, government loans should be available.

But going back to say, Flybe, it seems clear that the £100m the allegedly requested wouldn't have saved them anyway given developments.

Indeed. HS2 is about capacity not speed.

Came back from BGI this morning on the Millenium Falcon aka GVLIP and they had managed to squeeze in 468 of us according the crew, not a seat left in the house.

And it looks like they may have made their mind up concerning the next few weeks, bang goes my early May Florida trip.

Our flexible no change fees policy

To give you greater peace of mind with your upcoming travel plans, we've introduced a flexible no change fees policy.

For customers that have a ticket originally issued on or before 11 March 2020 for original dates of travel up to and including 31 May 2020.

Ticket issued date Original travel date Affected destination Permitted travel period On or before 11 March 2020 1 March 2020 – 31 May 2020 VS issued tickets from/to/through all destinations when travelling on a VS/VS* flight numberTravel can be rebooked

13 March 2020 – 31 December 2020

zfw

I guess Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway flight to Florida is now cancelled?

Yes that's correct

Wouldn't say cancelled. It is of course not running as planned but people have been promised the flight will go ahead at a "later date" (that is, if Virgin survives of course).

Excellent idea, direct it into the aviation and into research and development for electric aircraft and alternative fuels. Do that and there will still be billions left for other uses.

4-tracking Milton Keynes-Rugby and Rugby-Birmingham would knock the 20 minutes off the journey time at a fraction of the costs.


Really? then why is it designed for 250 mi./hour trains, much faster than the 180 mi./hour trains on high speed rail in the rest of Europe?
Also, the faster the trains, the lower the frequency.

Yes - the capacity increase is on the WCML following removal of the high speed services when HS2 opens. At the moment the mix of speeds on WCML is the limiting factor for paths as all slower traffic has to sidestep into loops as the much faster Pendelino traffic is given a clear run.
When those units are withdrawn the remaining regional, local and freight trains will be able to be rebalanced with a new timetable giving the capacity increase mentioned.
I'm pretty certain that many travellers are still not aware that their high speed trains to Euston will be withdrawn at some stage......

May as well make it faster as you’re only going to build it once and we want to be better than Europe🤣

So us pro HS2’ers have won the argument so back onto what the forum is about VA

Independent reports 75% of fleet to be grounded by end of March, rising to 85 % in April

Virgin will fly 11/46 aircraft from Wednesday and 6/46 from March 26th

Newark being dropped permanently it seems. It’s where it all began but with Delta at JFK, there’s just no love there.