A Misleading Report from the Daily Echo Regarding Passenger Flights?

[Ashley.S.]

RE: Air passengers can fly from Southampton to the USA and the Caribbean

THE world is opening up for travellers taking off from Hampshire.

Under a new codeshare agreement between Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic and regional airline Flybe passengers will soon be able to fly from Southampton to the USA and Caribbean.

From Saturday (April 2) customers will be able to book tickets through Virgin Atlantic Travel to fly from Southampton with Flybe to Manchester where they can connect with long-haul flights to the home Orlando (the home of Disneyworld and Universal Studios), Atlanta, Las Vegas, New York and Barbados.

From March 2017 passengers from Southampton will also be able to connect to Manchester flights bound for San Francisco and Boston.

The two carriers claim the partnership will offer “seamless connections” and passengers will be to check themselves and their luggage through to their final destination from Southampton.

This is the only partnership Virgin currently has with a regional airline, although other destinations are available with KLM.

Erik Varwijk, executive vice president of Virgin Atlantic, commented: “Our partnership with Flybe offers us a fantastic opportunity to reach customers looking to travel long haul from key cities throughout the UK and Europe. “ Vincent Hodder, Flybe’s chief revenue officer, said: “We are delighted to offer our UK and European customers such a host of exciting global travel options through this new partnership with Virgin Atlantic,”

“It reinforces our commitment to providing a ‘one stop to the world’ service.”

The deal adds to the growing list of connecting flights available from Southampton.

From May Dutch airline KLM will run two flights daily from Southampton to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.

The schedule has been devised to fit together with KLM’s long-haul network .From Amsterdam passengers can connect to flights to Asia, North and South America, Africa and Europe.

In April bmi regional will start flights to Munich, a hub airport with connections to many other European cities.

In 1994 Southampton had 450,000 passengers flying to around 15 destinations. Two decades on passenger figures have more than quadrupled with 1.8 million flying to around 40 destinations.

The codeshare is available for sale through Virgin Atlantic contact centres and travel agents from April 2 and will be available for sale via virginatlantic.com from April 6.

I'm kinda a local boy and used to live around a 10 min drive from the Airport so could always see aircraft flying low overhead near my house, but is this report misleading, since it's technically already possible? What are your thoughts on it? I'd love to know

 

[Aviador]

Well the key point to note is it says "Air passengers can fly from Southampton to the USA and the Caribbean". Crucially it doesn't say it is a "direct" flight which is what most people reading the story will think initially. Locally to me the airport has some billboards and recently one of them said "Fly from LBA to Dubai", it wasn't misleading because you can, it's just via Amsterdam.

As you asked the question about it being technically possible? Southampton has quite a short runway, so flights to the USA or the Caribbean would have to "tech-stop" enroute for refuelling.

 

[Ashley.S.]

By "technically possible" I mean by using connections or buying separate tickets e.g. Southampton>Manchester, then Manchester>USA.

I know the area fairly well and know that the airport is quite small and expansion could be problematic due to the motorway, railway and then housing, etc.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

The Flybe/Virgin codeshare is opening up many routes from smaller UK airports via Flybe 'hubs' at such airports as LGW, GLA and MAN where Virgin also flies from.