In late 2012 Delta and Virgin Atlantic announced a new transatlantic joint venture. It was a smart move for both carriers. Virgin Atlantic was struggling and thought that in order to survive they'd have to join an alliance. Meanwhile this was an opportunity for Delta to even further increase their presence in London Heathrow, and…
Continue reading: Delta & Virgin Atlantic Swapping Los Angeles & Atlanta Frequencies
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Why doesnt Delta push Virgin Atlantic to join SkyTeam? Wouldnt that provide more benefits to everyone for connecting passengers and revenue?
Lucky,
Is the process for using DL miles on Virgin difficult (assuming one would not use your service)? Is there a good amount of Virgin availablity and what is the typical amount of points, say JFK/LHR?
Thanks
major upgrade for ATL and major downgrade for LAX. Both hard and soft product difference between VS and DL is like night and day.
Lucky, how is availability on VS redeeming DL miles? Is it as bad as DL is for other redemptions?
@ Brian L. -- Delta doesn't have access to all of Virgin Atlantic's award space, though availability actually isn't horrible. Better than you might expect.
@ SKF -- Redemption rates are the same as they would be on any of Delta's other partners, so 125,000 SkyMiles for roundtrip business class between the US and Europe.
I redeemed 100K for Virgin Atlantic JFK/LHR route on Delta site last month. Pretty good deal.
Virgin has been pretty stingy with award space ex-LAX, so perhaps this will improve things a bit with skymiles for LAX-LHR travel.
I don't quite get the motivation for Virgin/DL to do this - what difference does it make to them?
@Andrew - I read that ATL was offering incentives to new airlines offering service out of the airport. Perhaps DL and VS are sharing in this revenue. Plus this frees a plane up for DL out of ATL for other services. And VS can sell a lot of connecting service to it's customers out of ATL.
@ Andrew -- That's a great question. Since they codeshare I don't see the financial incentive to do so either. Only explanations I can think of are:
1) To give flyers with each airline an option to fly their "native" carrier if they prefer
2) So they can individually say they serve more destinations/routes
3) As a test to see what the impact of something like this is.