Little Red Edinburgh

Folks,
interesting article in the Scotsman (newspaper) today with regard to the Edi to LHR Little Red service.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/comment-li ... -1-3106361

We have flowm Little Red as a connecting route from Edi to LHR for a VA trans-Atlantic hop, found it to be absolutely fine and punctual. Bit worrying for the future if the numbers are remaining low.

Seems that whole article is based upon a single return journey, where he saw empty seats on the flights.

Hardly evidence to conclude that the route is doomed to failure...

I agree that it is a bit of a stretch to announce the end based on one trip, I used to fly BMI quite a bit in the old days and the 16:30 was always quiet.

I would guess that most of the BA flights during the main part of the day are full of connectors and not many business types also.

Since the advent of Little Red, I've been using the service from both Aberdeen and Edinburgh. It does really worry me how little supported it is. The average pax numbers for an Aberdeen leg is about in the 30's. I just do not understand why someone would choose a more expensive ageing aircraft with stuffy old crew over the much more comfortable relaxed LR service. It is nice to have whole sections of the aircraft to yourself but ultimately I don't want it to stop.

One of the main factors I can see being an issue here is that I have noticed a fare premium of approx £56 return being added to an international leg for the bolted on domestic connection. (In some cases ive actually seen it being less than the LHR departure!!!!) When I'm travelling with work it's sometimes as much as £300 return. Stop penalising me in favour of the family travelling with you once to the States!!!!!

I tried to get the same approx £56 added to a fully flexible economy international ticket the other day and was told that the "system" would not allow mixed classes so I'm getting ripped off £170 return domestically on top of an already premium fare yet someone is sitting next to me for £56 and paying the cheapest fare available internationally. They do need to sort some of this out. It all adds up. :-////

I know launching an airline takes time, and being able to keep long haul connecting passengers "in house" is a benefit.

But ...

How long can VS sustain what, on many LR flights, are clearly woefully low loads?

If many passengers are effectively flying for free as they're connecting or - as of this month - using vouchers earned in the latest UC tier points promotion, how on earth can LR possibly turn a profit?

The reality is, this is not America. We are too small a country to sustain 4 or 5 competing domestic airlines. Manchester to London is faster and less hassle by train. Aberdeen's just not a big enough market. Only Edinburgh has a realistic hope of being viable.

Look at Australia where people rely on air to get around far more than we do. Yet it can only sustain three carriers.

I've said from the beginning VS will only win by offering a radically superior product to BA, and at the moment it's not. If they're serious about LR they need to use the move to LHR T2 next summer to really deliver the wow factor. Otherwise I fear Little Red may become just another airline flash in the pan.

Loads aren't everything when it comes to Little Red remember. If there's only 60 pax on a little red service but at least 10 or more of the pax are connecting from an UC flight, then it changes the whole dynamic of the service (was the case last time I picked up a couple of UC travellers last time at ABZ). LR may be loss making standalone but potentially losing just those 10 pax amounts to a lot of lost revenue.

The product is fine but even if VS pulled out rows of seat and increased pitch and served full meals on LR would it make a difference? Probably not. The key to success as BA as proven on their domestics is frequency. Look at the ABZ-LHR schedules for BA and VS and ask who is more attractive. BA 9-3 VS in terms of rotations. Most of the long haul connections for VS require connection times of at least 3-4 hours whilst with BA you can easily secure just 90 minutes. Majority of travellers don't want to waste hours in airports twiddling their thumbs. And even then for O&D the timings are very similar so if you have 3x more options with BA why choose VS? It's the same story for EDI and MAN 12-6, 11-4. The harsh truth is that although the cabins are pretty the schedules are crap and nothing new has been brought to the table so the folks who have been flying BA will continue to fly with BA since there is no good reason to switch.

Habits are hard to change.

Remember bmi struggled and actually ditched Glasgow at the end. However I think Virgin have been a bit smarter than bmi. Time will tell, and there have been reports of extremely busy flights too.

However what Virgin are doing is feeding LHR traffic and making it that bit harder for BA to totally monopolize domestic LHR traffic.