V-Flyer

I look at the VS Source most days and i'm astounded that Virgin seem to fly so many "positioning flights", these are empty, normally between Gatwick and Manchester or vice versa.
I get the summer Belfast services etc, but all year they seem to fly a great many empty planes. Their 330-200's are always shifting between the two, and last week there was one day when a 747 flew empty from Manchester to Gatwick whilst another 747 flew empty from Gatwick to Manchester.

Fleet utilisation seems to be very erratic. I wonder how the green brigade would feel about so many aeroplanes making empty trips because the timetable seems to be so disjointed.

No it's not erratic but carefully planned to get the maximum use of the fleet.

The swaps are there as a lot of the weekly routine maintenance is done at LGW

Take G-WVND for example spent the last week based at MAN flying a number of routes. It returned MAN to LGW on Sunday where it would have had it's weekly maintenance check and is now operating from LGW

Another plane would have spent the week serving LGW came back for maintenance then went to MAN to operate there for a week or so

What used to happen as well in the past was that they would do a swap at MCO where an LGW 747 would fly in from LGW, turnround at MCO and retuen to MAN and another plane would do the reverse and then have maintenance at LGW.