Is Virgin struggling to fill its MIA route?!

So first they do that promo where you rock up to Waterloo or wherever and get free tickets and now reward seats for the next month are available at 40% off! Are they struggling to sell the MIA route? I'd be very annoyed if I'd paid $$$ for flights over the next month.

[buns]

I will let you know for definite today, but am awaiting the second VS Flight to Miami (VS5) and I suspect the flight is full

Perhaps filling two flights a day is proving a challenge

buns

It is a very odd and specific promotion...

The VS118 MIA-LHR last Saturday only had 127 on board - and UC was full so down the back must have been very quiet.

This should be peak time for the Florida winter and Caribbean cruises - maybe Hurricane Irma hit cruise bookings hard.

There were only 50 tickets and you paid £50 for them so hardly a mass give away and you had to fly out on the 23rd Jan and back on the 25th so very specific dates. Was there a specific event happening in MIami that weekend or part of a 'visit Miami' promotion?

Anyway I don't think 50 cheap tickets on 2 midweek flights marks the end of the route.

As to the sale - well that's life!

Well the VS117/118 rotation is returning again for Winter '18 so yields must be good enough to justify another running.

[buns]

299 on today’s flight

Admittedly many children and quite a few of us connecting to MCO

buns

Our flight back from MIA over Xmas was very quiet. We were contemplating upgrading but glad we hadn’t as I ended up with a row of 4 seats and the rest of the family had 2 seats each. In the past on the return journey there was many a time a chance to give up your seat due to full flights.

I certainly won't be rushing to fly to Miami again. Awful awful airport.

We are actually moving terminals very soon in MIA. Load factors are not as good this year because flights went on sale late due to a hold up with the 787 issues. MIA is not going anywhere. It is making a decent profit despite some load factors being low.

[Nottingham Nick]

I have never been a fan of MIA, and have advocated for years that VS would be better off at FLL, but having said that, I am glad the route isn't in danger of disappearing.

Nick

Shifting it to FLL might be better for leisure travellers but lose VS business passengers.

BA and Norwegian fly to FLL and the market might not support a 3rd airline to FLL.

AA and BA fly LHR-MIA and I don't see VS (and inter alia DL) wanting to cede to route to them.

The MIA-LHR route is the biggest route at MIA (even bigger than MIA-NYC) with a tad under 1 million pax. (source wiki article on MIA)

KLM have a seasonal service to AMS. It's possible when the VS-KL-AF joint venture starts and KL stop their flight and filter pax on to the VS service via LHR

[mitchja]

MIA was one of the very early routes VS launched ( hence the 5/6 flight number) as well so it's an old route, though was originally op'ed from LGW.

The move cannot come soon enough and unless the facilities improve massively due to the move, I will never return to MIA again. The current facilities and the concourse VS use at MIA are an utter disgrace.

There's also no TSA-Pre in the concourse VS use either. That Club America 'lounge' is just laughable.

Case in point:

53671079555__D34158C3-05C0-4F79-8673-5633B0705042.jpg (3.2 MiB) Viewed 2907 times

I took this photo from the smoking area across the road (where I spent most of my time) when I was there in January. Look at the state of the entrance with the missing signs , that's roughly the entrance to where the VS check-in desks are located

FLL for me from now on as well. There are plenty of DL connections via either ATL or JFK for FLL which is the way I'm doing it for New Year 2018. FLL is also closer the the beaches as well.

I have to agree that I don't like MIA - last year it was better than previously, but we had a very long wait for the ESTA machines. We flew out of RSW to EWR and thought RSW was a very nice airport. Of course, this only works if you want to travel elsewhere within the US but we will try to do a similar trip next time.

[mitchja]

Looks like the VS118 went tech yesterday as well as VS currently have 2 departures today from MIA, the VS118 and the VS1118.

Hi, I see that Virgin is Best is suggesting VS will be moving terminals at MIA fairly soon. I wondered if there is any idea of when that may be. We are due to fly in 6.5.18 and out 4.6.18. It would be great to think we would miss the awful currently used terminal.
Thanks.