V-Flyer

i might be late to this (apologies if so....)
But I was reading an article here
http://centreforaviation.com/analysis/v ... snt-205199

That Virgin are now lukewarm to taking their A380 options up.
Is this looking like A380 will never now be in the VS fleet?

I don't think they are dead and Craig Kreeger did make reference to the options recently, stating that if the economic case stacked up they would be on them, but it would need to be viable.

I do think with the extra space available on an A380 that VS would make it a very special plane indeed, think of the bar on a 380!!

In my opinion they'll be converted to A350 orders (bear in mind DL has a big order for the 350-900) to replace to Gatwick fleet...

I really don't feel they need the 380 now. It was a great idea but doesn't seem to fit the business model of many airlines now. Even several of those that bought them are now struggling to find a use for them (MH and TG in particular).
Having just a few in the fleet makes it an expensive operation from a maintenance point of view. The market seems to be much more about schedule options and frequency.
I would expect VS to have a fleet entirely of 787's and 350's in future (or maybe even an entire 787 fleet) - that would be extremely cost effective in many ways

LREDI wrote:In my opinion they'll be converted to A350 orders (bear in mind DL has a big order for the 350-900) to replace to Gatwick fleet...

More likely to be the A350-1000 as that's the closest capacity-wise.

Like others have posted an A380, to me anyway, does not fit in with VS routes or plans.....At the moment.
I was guessing that perhaps before the Delta tie in there could have been one placed on one of the very busy routes to the East Coast US to allow for more capacity and lose one of the other slots to the same location later / earlier in the day.
However the thought of what VS could do with an A380 does being a little sadness.

As there are no plans atm to replace the 747's on the Orlando route, the 787 probably wouldn't move as many pax, so maybe the A350 would be a better option? By that time, the 747 fleet will be quite old.

They might not have conversion options on their A380 options though! So they could go all boing and get the B777-X8 or 9 (or 10!)
The A380 holds very little cargo, and VS seem to do quite well on cargo on a few routes.

kushty wrote:As there are no plans atm to replace the 747's on the Orlando route, the 787 probably wouldn't move as many pax, so maybe the A350 would be a better option? By that time, the 747 fleet will be quite old.

The leases on the LGW 747's start expiring from 2019 iirc, and I think I read somewhere that a decision on the fleet replacement could be sooner rather than later, sometime this year I believe. So plans are definitely afoot!! It's been posted many a time on here about the number of seats per day that will be lost. For me the 777 (either the -300 series in the short term, and eventually the -8x or 9x) in terms of capacity will be best solution, and would look damn good in VS colours