Shai Weiss, CEO of Virgin Atlantic -interview

How important is India as a market? Is Virgin looking at services to further cities?
Routes are like small businesses, you have to treat them like that. It usually takes between two to three years to reach peak performance. When you decide to do Mumbai double daily, you already have that daily service to Mumbai so you’re not starting from scratch. We can do better on these routes, but the bet we’re making on India is not new. Next year will be 25 years of flying from London to India. Next year will be 1 million seats in 25 years.
There were plans to launch routes to Mumbai and Delhi from Manchester in 2020 but these were dropped. Is Virgin planning to relaunch these in the future?
Right now, no. I’m sure at the appropriate time when we have more planes.
What are the main challenges with routes to India?
It’s all to do with connectivity. The visas could also be streamlined dramatically, and I’m sure at some point India will look again at this. In Bengaluru, the airport is fantastic – one of the best in India. And the number of airports it’s building is second to none. It’s not a matter of infrastructure or safety, it’s a matter of getting the schedule right, business right and making sure that the prices are good. Bengaluru is known as India’s Silicon Valley. Virgin launched a route to Austin, Texas for similar reasons back in 2022 but cancelled the route after a year due to lack of corporate demand. Do you see more promise in Bengaluru? We get excited by new routes and sad when we have to cancel them. We have a highly intensive capital business. Those assets can be moved. As much as we would have liked Austin to succeed, it didn’t. It’s nothing to do with our customers, it’s more to do with our market and the state of tech in the US. It’s been a rough two years for tech in the US. We have to make the tough calls and allocate the assets to places that have a better chance. We think Bengaluru is one of them. We need to work extremely hard to make sure that we fulfil the demand, are as competitive and we provide the best service.
On the topic of the network, is there any news on Sao Paulo?
It’s delayed indefinitely. This is the second time we’ve delayed it. The inaugural was 31 March, 2020. We all know what happened. The second time around, we were a bit cautious coming into 2024 on the back of inflation, interest rates and corporate customers not returning in full force just yet. A route takes time to reach its full potential. We wanted to protect 2024 a bit more and make sure that the overall financial performance fulfils our plan to return to profitability this year. One of the things was to taper down new and exciting routes.