Virgin Atlantic Launching Tampa Flights

Lucky don’t Edelweiss now fly the a340 from Zurich to Tampa International rather than Miami? They were cheaper tickets than Swiss pre pandemic, but now I see little difference in price between the tickets on Swiss to Miami and the leisure division across the cabins.

What carriers have the most market share in Tampa?

With American entrenched in Miami, I would have expected one of UA or DL to try to establish a focus city / hub somewhere in Florida. Tampa, Orlando, FLL all options.

With most of my fellow countrymen living in Sarasota and in excess of 450k expats living in Florida or having second homes their I am pretty sure they will do ok on this new route.

Tampa International Airport recent market share report. Southwest 25%. American & Delta each at 17%.

At the moment, TPA is a bit of a mixed bag among DL, AA, UA & NK with DL and AA essentially tied among the legacies. WN leads the way though, which obviously isn’t any help to Virgin.

Here’s an annoying chart with their numbers:

https://www.tampaairport.com/sites/default/master/files/Market%20Share%20%28Rolling%2012%20Month%29.pdf

One small correction. Virgin Atlantic flies more than 4x daily to Orlando on some days. They have up to 2x daily flights to both LHR and MAN, and they have some flights a week (not daily) to Belfast and Glasgow. So they have up to 5 or 6 flights a day from MCO (and used to be up to 7x flights a day pre-pandemic -with 6 of them on their leisure configured 747's - when they made LGW 3x daily on peak days with an additional A330 service).

That's pretty impressive for an airline as small as Virgin Atlantic to have that kind of frequency into Orlando!

They still do, but it’s not daily (as it isn’t the FRA-TPA on Eurowings). Edelweiss was never priced cheap. TPA and MIA are two totally different markets. Throw in the mix RSW (also not daily) and MCO and you have quite a few chances to get yourself to Europe from Florida.

But it’s not shocking. Brits LOVE Disney and they go in masses. Virgin is the perfect airline to serve the market

BA will have done there research, Tampa is mainly a leisure route from London - most passengers will be point-to-point, there will be minimal transfer pax which is why they use Gatwick saving a precious Heathrow slot pair for a more profitable route.

Wonderful news. With more long haul travel coming to TPA, it’s time for a dedicated contract lounge in the F terminal.

As a TPA-based flyer, I've long wanted the BA flight to move over to Heathrow. While FL is obviously a big leisure destination for Brits, it is also a growing business city, and I would bet that there would be more ex-TPA connecting demand than many might realize. I often find myself flying down to MIA when a TPA-LHR flight would avoid this.

Virgin also flew to Edinburgh from MCO at one point, so they had 8 flights out of MCO on some days pre-pandemic (I believe it was on Saturdays). You could see up to 5 Virgin 747's at MCO at once. I once saw 6 when one of the earlier flights was delayed. Given that Virgin only had 8 747-400's, on some days 7 of them would be flying to Orlando. Virgin had a bigger base at MCO

Hello ! Europe ! Tampa/St.Pete/Clearwater Calling. Talking to YOU AF/LH/IB maybe SK... WE ARE HERE ! We have business and money. FLY here !!

Agggh! Those horrible seats (as pictured) engulfed in dark purple lighting sets the scene for a flight to hell IMHO!

Northwest had a small hub in TPA way back in the day, didn't last though.

UA tried a secondary hub in MIA all the way through 2001, but could never gain much marketshare.

DL also tried to build up a focus at MIA, and at one point were flying RJs intra-Florida and to other destinations from there, as well as mainline to Cuba, but pulled back.

DL also used to have a DL-Cnnx hub at MCO, alongside several longhaul nonstops to Brazil, but that didn't last either.

This is great news especially combined with Virgin’s announcement about dedicated award seats….now if they could just do something about the taxes…..

I wonder which airside they will use in Tampa? Delta has a Skyclub in E, and you would think VS would want premium customers to have club access (which they would get from the VS-DL partnership), but only airside F has customs... I think when DL had TPA-AMS it departed from E but arrived at F. Similar arrangement here?

My partner's family live around St Petersburg and Sarasota so we take the BA flight several times each year. Gatwick is better than Heathrow for us, but any competitive impact on fares would make a big difference so this is welcome. My experience of Virgin is just that bit better as well. BA has operated a 777 the last few times, and I understand the 787 is more efficient. It's a while since I've flown on one: any views on comparative comfort?

And as a Brit who comes to FL in summer as well as winter, I have to say if I didn't love my partner's family as much as I do you could only get me there between May and September by giving me lots and lots of $$$ to take part in a contest to find the grumpiest Englishman in the Tampa Bay area.

As far as I am aware, as a Tampa resident, I am told it is not going to be the dreamliner that they are going to be using. They are going to be using the Airbus with the tired ole herringbone pattern. They STILL haven't gotten right of that awful configuration after what? 15 years of being told it is a crappy configuration.... still, that moan aside, glad to see I won't have to go through Atlanta anymore. Great airport, but immigration? Yuck.

Positive development. BA will have to move its service to Heathrow or the Gatwic flight will disappear. Both can not sustain itself.Tampa is not large enough for both. Similar is the Washington D C area but BWI is the growing airport the busiest of all three D c area airports. Dulles attempting to pull political strings to keep its hold on international routes from going over to BWI the peoples choice.