Last week I wrote about Virgin Atlantic's continued expansion. So far this year Virgin Atlantic has announced new routes to Tel Aviv and Sao Paulo, and last week they announced yet another route. Virgin Atlantic will be launching daily flights between London Heathrow and Mumbai as of October 27, 2019. Flights are on sale as…
Continue reading: Virgin Atlantic’s Mumbai Flight Now Bookable
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@Lucky - Sorry this is unrelated, but Niki Lauda (the Laudamotion guy) passed away.
https://www.foxnews.com/auto/niki-lauda-f1-champion-aviation-entrepreneur-dead-at-70
Jet Airways' flights to Mumbai had a large domestic feed. British Airways serves the P2P demand well. Not sure what Virgin's strategy is - without a domestic feed - and with plenty of competition to NA, including Delta's announced JFK-BOM service.
what do we make of it ? well, where did the LHR slot pair come from? Cuz nothing landing LHR @0735 ever comes cheap from either external market price or internal opportunity cost.
BA has a jillion slots to play with and can easily hand off any self-cannibalized service over to their LGW ops. Question is, what did VS do here ? "Leased" from DL ? Bought from open market or from the corpse of 9W ? Or self-cannibalized something that would be only apparent when purchase availability shows up on GDS ?
@henry LAX, EY actually owned 9W's LHR slots which is why they are adding extra AUH LHR flights plus leasing one to JU for another daily BEG LHR.
Who knows where VS scored these from!
@henry LAX Jet Airways's 9 AM departure from Mumbai , was actually operated on Virgin Atlantic's slot at LHR , VS had given Jet Airways a slot , & both the Airlines had a Codesharing arrangement . So now that 9W is gone they may switch some other route to that slot , & get the 10 AM slot at LHR .
This is going to be VS' third attempt with Mumbai. I really don't know how they plan on making it work because neither do they currently have domestic feed in India, but there just aren't enough lucrative connections on VS' network out of Heathrow to make this slot work, I have never been able to book a respectable ticket to my final destination at the right price out of India on Virgin Atlantic.
Too late for skyteam to return to India and break the dominance of ME3 and star alliance with air india. Would not be surprised when both virgin and delta suspend this route.
Good luck to them but I suspect they will struggle to make this work, as many others have said, without any domestic feed in India, and competing with the frequency of BA services... hasn’t BA already increased their frequency on this route since Jet stopped flying it?
9W was flying thrice daily on BOM-LHR, once daily BOM-CDG and once daily BOM-AMS. I think the addition of 2 weekly flights by KL and 1x daily by VS to BOM should be absorbed by the DL/AF/KL/VS joint venture even without domestic India feed.. But BOM is definitely a market where both VS and KL would want to ultimately be able to sustain daily services with a network of connections to Europe and North America - so I would say now is perhaps the best time to jump.
Yes, BA did add 4 weekly flights and there were also reports of AI looking to start another daily rotation on BOM-LHR - will be interesting to see how things pan out.
There are plenty of UK based travellers who will fly Virgin Atlantic on this route. I know that I will do so, 6 times per year at the very least. If I have to fly business and direct, then this is the first choice. BA is a poor second with their Club World dormitories. However, they often have good deals in First on this route if booked a few weeks in advance (not always possible for me), in which case I will fly BA First direct from London.
I think Virgin is in a far stronger position this time around to make Mumbai work then they have ever been.
For one, their JV with Delta means they can offer a competitive proposition in terms of onward connectivity which is something they couldn’t do earlier on their own. The schedule is perfectly aligned to their North American network.
Secondly, their links to the AF- KLM-DL JV means they can offer a choice of routings and hubs. For a business traveller it means they can fly via London on the way up to NYC and return via CDG AMS or direct (Delta) making it a very compelling proposition for business travellers.
With 9W out of the picture there is an accute shortage of seats from India particularly Mumbai where Jet operated the maximum flights. With three 777s gone, an additional 787-9 should be no problem to fill particularly with a mix of connecting and O&D traffic. Virgin along with BA would exclusively offer overnight services from Mumbai to London.
Given that the 789 is a far more fuel efficient aircraft, Virgin is more likely then ever to strike gold this time.
Although Virgin Atlantic flts from London to Bom is encouraging , it is nothing like Jet airways which connected hundreds of US,Canada,&UK passangers to domestic airlines to various cities across India.Difficult to fill the services of Jet airways.Do not think in the long run ,unless Delta /Virgin establishes domestic airline partners,the new upcoming flts may not last long. Added to this Indian Airline companies are having tough time staying in business and making profit.