Little Red Pricing

Rant Warning.....

Ok, so lets establish first, I'm a huge VA fan and have been long awaiting the advent of a domestic service of any challenge to BA and low and behold I struck gold with the announcement of Little Red.

I have posted on here previously that I seriously hoped that VA would get the pricing just right and sit somewhere above Easyjet, and create a competitive market place to stop BA being able (whilst they had the monopoly) to sometimes charge £379 for a domestic return ABZ to LHR.

Here's this weeks scenario. I need to book next week down Thursday, back Friday. VA is showing the ridiculous cost of £308 return from ABZ. EDI is £175. I am continually frustrated by airlines ripping off the ABZ passenger for what is essentially 10-15mins more flying time. They seem to forget that First Class train travel with the Airlink bus is pretty much £55 return door to door from Aberdeen to Edinburgh airport which completely negates the purpose of flying from my home town. Then they say that the route is never supported and pull it. I fly pretty much every two weeks and I would say I end up using ABZ 30% vs EDI 70% of the time, purely on price.

Looking at the launch of Little Red I was pretty pleased with the sub £100 return fare and I have noticed that you do need to book well I advance to get this. I simply do not get it??? I'm noticing a premium of about £55 when adding an ABZ LHR domestic return onto VA international flights later in the year and as documented the same flight with a MAN LHR domestic connection amazingly being £60 cheaper than from LHR!!!!!

So it seems the once a year leisure passenger wins here and the two to three times a month passenger is shafted. I am FC AU and clearly I want to choose my airline of choice, but the massive increase in cost is just not justifiable. I'm a big fan of Easyjet domestically too. I cant remember the last time I had any issue with them. £100 return to Gatwick and a hire car for £50 to drive to Guildford versus £308 before we even start? It was £369 return with VA to the US at the weekend! I understand ramping the price up on the day and possibly the day before, but it would appear that LR pricing starts rising 4wks before and seems to have little reflection on loads either.

I really hope somebody from VA reads this. They are forcing away (already) the very customer they should be looking after.

...but DYKWIA

Good points made and tbh as long as the airlines can make a fast buck off the business traveller, who has last minute itinerary changes, they will.

It would be interesting to see how load dependant this is though, starter loads have apparently been quite light - I have yet to fly on them but hoping to get around to it soon. I would also look at measuring the online pricing to turn up on the day prices.... could a better deal be negotiated at the airport I wonder

Have you compared the VS price to BA with the same parameters? I have found that BA do exactly the same thing - Euro hops for me and usually last minute.. BA can really push the boat price wise on occasion n(

As for the price diff between EDI and ABZ, Little Red flies 6 flights a day to/from EDI and only 3 a day to/from ABZ... the increased frequency and larger potential pax numbers may very well point to why it is cheaper to fly to EDI than ABZ - double the amount of seats available, got to fill them :w

I would say give it time, they may very well bring their prices down when that new pig airport is built and when the dinosaur is resurrected y) .. who knows, could happen

Keep an eye out for a sale otherwise, I know I will 8D

The other major consideration is that the competing rail services to Glasgow and Edinburgh are credible alternatives.

I rarely fly to Edinburgh these days as first class on East Coast is such a bargain (booking in advance).

But when I go further north, the additional journey time does become a consideration and I will generally fly to Inverness or Aberdeen. Eight hours on a train to Inverness and seven hours to Aberdeen is suddenly a day spent travelling, so airlines can charge a premium for the time saving.

Always good to hit the businessman !,,

They charge what the market will bear.

They charge what the market will bear.

Exactly. Easyjet may only charge £100 return to Gatwick, but business people don't want to go to Gatwick.

Presumably the reason BA and now VS can get away with charging upwards of £300 is because the oil companies are willing to pay it.