General Industry

Virgin Atlantic To End Little Red Domestic Service

By Publications Checkout
Virgin Atlantic To End Little Red Domestic Service

Virgin Atlantic has said that it plans to end its domestic short haul service, Little Red, in 2015.

Little Red, which is operated by Aer Lingus using Virgin livery, was launched two years ago and is owned by Richard Branson and Delta Air Lines. It is due to close as it has "not been able to make a positive contribution" to the company.

It offers routes from London to Manchester, Edinburgh and Aberdeen which were supposed to provide feeder traffic for Virgin's international routes. However, although it has carried over a million customers, it does not provide enough feeder traffic, with the majority of passengers flying point to point. The airline also said that an inadequate number of slots were made available by the European Commission which did not allow them to properly compete with BA's domestic service.

The Manchester route will be the first to go in March, followed by Edinburgh and Aberdeen six months later.

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