SIR Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic airline is going head-to-head with arch-rival British Airways by launching its first domestic flights, and will step up the fight to launch services between Scottish airports and Heathrow.
Virgin this morning announced that it will begin services between Manchester and London from March and hopes to link Aberdeen and Edinburgh with Heathrow.
It said it will bid to take over slots on those routes, now available as a result of the IAG takeover.
It has appealed against the European Commission’s decision to approve the IAG takeover of BMI.
A Virgin Atlantic spokeswoman said the deal would limit consumer choice.
“We believe the deal will cause serious competitive harm at Heathrow, placing British Airways in a position of total market dominance at the world’s busiest airport, and completely eroding consumer choice.
“We will bid to operate all of the remedy slots that BA has been forced to give up through the process. We have made clear our commitment to operate on much of bmi’s existing network throughout.
“When BA holds 54 per cent of the slots at Heathrow, the impacts of the deal are exacerbated. If there had been more room to grow there, we would have more opportunity to offer network competition to BA.
“Instead, we will fight hard to take on the remedy slots available in order to offer short-haul competition to BA for passengers flying from Scotland and elsewhere to London and beyond.
“The slots include services to Aberdeen and Edinburgh and Moscow.”
News of the move comes a week after Branson’s joint venture with Sir Brian Souter’s Perth-based Stagecoach Group, Virgin Trains, lost the west coast rail franchise, which runs between Glasgow, Manchester and London.
But Virgin Atlantic chief executive Steve Ridgway said the move was in response to the takeover of BMI by British Airways’ parent company rather than Virgin Trains’ loss of the rail service between the two cities.
Ridgway said: “Since BMI was swallowed up by British Airways, the competition that existed on domestic routes and European routes has disappeared.
“Virgin Atlantic has obviously provided great competition over the years internationally on the long-haul routes and this is about redressing that as part of the process of making sure that BA doesn’t become a monopolist on all the routes BMI used to fly.”
The airline said the Manchester route was “the start of a new network” of city-to-city flights and connections to its long-haul services.
