easyJet-to-Virgin Partnership?

[Basic Service]

With Stelios making waves in the City, threatening to withdraw the use of the branding 'easyJet' to the airline, it is hardly surprising to read in Flight International that Virgin and the easyJet Board have had discussions regarding some sort of partnership.
If Virgin are looking for a 'feeder' and easyJet are facing a possible rebranding exercise.....what could be better? Faced with the prospect of losing an extremely identifiable brand, easyJet could do worse.
Stelios must have thought he had the Board over a barrel before this interesting turn of events!
Any thoughts?

[springbok449]

Well that could be the answer to a big problem for VS getting a feeder Airline to get a hub system going out of London...which I think is key to VS future plans.

Would be interesting to see how they would both sort out logistics betw.een LHR and LGW though.

Good luck to both parties.

[Speevy]

Basic Service, any reference to the flight international article you mentioned?

Speevy

[ab33t]

two big brands on the same wagon that would be interesting

[easy]

We already have LGW, but LHR just wouldn't fit the U2 model.

Looking forward to getting VS staff travel benefits though!

[TopBunk]

Would they be branded as "Easy Virgin":p

[Union Jack]

two big brands on the same wagon that would be interesting ....

.... especially if the message read "Easy Virgin"!:eek:

Jack

[Basic Service]

Speevy....

Flight International 8th-14th June 2010 - page 10
Title " Branson prepared to surrender his virginity"

[TOFFAIR]

Sounds crazy!, who knows, maybe if Willie moves to Barajas, there might be slots left in LHR, then Branson pays out Stelios, who buys 190 ac and builds a new LCC, meanwhile O Leary takes over Wizz Air and Air Asia...
:}

[andrew152]

the same article also discusses the option of BMI as a partner. I wonder if this is going to be the future of aviation... airlines having to merge in order to survive and remain competitive. We have BA and Iberia, United and Continental and maybe next Virgin and BMI/Easyjet. How would the likes of ryanair (or BMI if they are not involved in a merger) be able to compete without eventually having to look at merging or taking over another airline?

[sixmilehighclub]

Virgin Sun was a branding excercise and not an ownership, so who knows it could happen!

What will Easyjets' new CEO do? Is this her idea?

[wind check]

Stop dreaming ladies! This will never ever happen. If Easyjet has to merge with something, it will be with Wizzair or Vueling or Transavia or even Ryanair. The phylosophy of creating a hub with a long haul airline feeded by regional and medium haul airlines is very expensive and this has nothing to do with a low cost model.

[calypso]

If it ain´t broke and it makes loads of cash... don´t fix it

[stansdead]

Ladies and Gents,


Dream on. VS are in a position of serious weakness. They have LHR slots, sure. BUT!!! They never make any consistent profits, they have failed to reach any sort of critical mass and that is everything in airline flying these days (BA/IB/AA or NW/DL or CO/UA if anyone needed persuading of the realities).

VS would love a merger with someone, because let's face it, there's no future as a long haul airline with 35 airplanes and they don't have the cash or profits on existing routes to expand hugely again.

There is quite possibly a second credit crunch coming. The difference with this one will be that the Governments have no money left to help....... hence credit will be extremely limited and financing anything, yet alone airline expansion will be very, very difficult.

I see VS having to surrender control to Lufthansa, and I believe the VS brand (as we know it today) may disappear in the next 10 years.

However, a tie up with eJ would be utterly unworkable without either eJ moving ops to LHR (never happen), or VS moving to, or expanding massively in LGW (see above for reasons why that won't happen).

I give this a 9.5 out of 10 for a bad merger if it happens....:{