Farewell, Little Red

Just at LHR T2 waiting for the VS3001 to EDI. Then back down to London and up to ABZ tonight on the very last Little Red flight, the VS3025.

A very sad day. Everyone involved with Little Red, both in the air and on the ground, has put everything into making it a pleasure to fly on over the last two-and-a-half years. I know many of the cabin crew are moving across to mainline VS and I wish them all the very best.

Farewell, Little Red. UK domestic air travel will be the poorer without you.

I will be at LHR later to fly the last EDI an Sealink will be joining you on the last ABZ. We are meeting up at LHR this evening if you want to meet up with us.

Sadly cannot join you Chris fully agree with comments such a shame Little Red is going I enjoyed the Manchester route as did horbury flier who must have made gold three times over using this route

Hope they have something special planned and have a great flight

Well having just flown the final VS3001 I lost count of the number of times the captain, first officer and SCC member mentioned it was the final day and thanked us for our custom these past two-and-a-half years. They are obviously genuinely gutted that it's finishing. I gather there's a party tonight for all the LHR-based crew, before a lot of them head to Crawley to start training for VS mainline on Monday.

Chris - will message you later, don't quite know my timings yet.

If the final flights ex-LHR are anything like the last MAN in March, there'll be no catering on board and they'll give out vouchers at check-in to spend in T2 so it's worth stopping by check-in even if you're travelling HBO.

I'm on the 3011 - the final lhr-edi - this evening.
My sadness is equal parts the knowledge that it's back to BA for my Heathrow flights again... Ugh!

Wish I could be there, but sadly I shall be raising a glass of whiskey to the death of Little Red from the lovely city of Melbourne.

Little Red, you gave me sanctuary from having to fly BA. Albeit with limited routes, you were there for me when needed and you shall be sadly missed.

No goodbyes, just good memories

I'm on the 3011 - the final lhr-edi - this evening.
My sadness is equal parts the knowledge that it's back to BA for my Heathrow flights again... Ugh!

I will be in 29A on the 3011.

I was on the very 1st EDI to LHR Little Red flight but will unfortunately not be able to make the last one

Such as shame as every time I had used them, they were very good and always seemed to be a bit cheaper than BA ( may be that was part of the problem )

Having found out how easy connections are via ATL to my fav destination, it's a real pity I will have to use BA to get down to Heathrow

Can I wish all the LR crew all the best for their future and hope it is as good as their past

David

Sadly cannot join you Chris fully agree with comments such a shame Little Red is going I enjoyed the Manchester route as did horbury flier who must have made gold three times over using this route

Hope they have something special planned and have a great flight

Saying goodbye to the Manchester route back in March was really sad. I certainly did mange just a 'few' Little Red flights in that two-year period.....great to see that many of the Manchester based LR crew are now enjoying life on 'big' red though hoping I know for more Manchester long-haul flying so they can avoid the LHR/LGW commute.

Good luck to the LHR, EDI and ABZ LR teams. Such a shame that LR wasn't the success we all wanted it to be. A sad day indeed but I will always have great memories of my time with LR.

Jon

Just boarded the last VS3011. The senior crew have said thank you to V-Flyers everywhere for their support over the last two years.

Fair well Little Red. And thank you for bringing a little splash of red to the sky.

Just about to leave on the VS3025 to ABZ - the very last LR flight.

The captain gave a very emotional 5 minute speech over the PA thanking all the ground crew and cabin crew.

Lots of staff & crew on board - it's going to be a fun flight!

Water cannon salute on arrival at EDI, and a piper (!) on the tarmac, ffs! Lots of evidence of a staff party around gate 6 too...

I understand the emotion, but still seems an odd way to say goodbye to an airline which ultimately failed...

I was on the VS3025. Captain gave a great speech; I video'd some if it.

Fire Service escorted Tartan Lassie to the stand.

have to add my remorse that LR no longer flies to EDI.
We only flew Once and loved it.
Have to wonder if all these route cancellations are thanks to DL grrrrr
Anyway heres hoping VS will return to their former glories one day and if they ever fly to Tokyo again I will definitely choose them over the more "mature" BA.

Have to wonder if all these route cancellations are thanks to DL grrrrr

Unfortunately the loadings on average weren't great and it doesn't really take the influence of DL to realise that if loadings aren't great then the services aren't worthwhile for VS to justify running.

All that said, it's a shame Little Red is no more - I did MAN-LHR and LHR-MAN earlier this year and couldn't complain, plus I loved LHR T2 . I wish all the crew involved the best of luck in their future endeavours, be it with VS full-time, back to Aer Lingus or something different.

Think I flew L R about 60 or 70 times. I will miss it immensely, it had a huge beneficial impact on my business travel and it's back to Easyjet for me with so much restriction on times etc on the ABZ routes.

I got to know a lot of the crews well, and just feel it was not handled very well with regards marketing and certainly in the oil heavy business community of ABZ not enough schmoozing and perk handing out to the travel bookers.

My missus had her oil company employers "on call" mobile phone one weekend ( everyone had to have it once a year) and mostly it was to help organise last minute travel for contractors. She would take calls then had to call up a designated company travel agent who just auto booked BA. I pointed out to her that LR was £100 cheaper for a flight departing 5mins difference so she called them back to ask to move it. They did eventually after a few moans, but ultimately I saved her company £100 and passed the business to LR. It does make you wonder what perks are dished out to the agents by BA. Perhaps if scenarios like this were addressed, then it might be still flying. As I pretty much flew LR every other week, it became easy for me to spot the real issues like making it just too difficult to book. The website (again) was, and still is terrible, the app also. ( take a leaf out the easyjet book please) and often when booking a LR domestic connection to a Long Haul VS I was forced with no option but to book separate flights, showing me and I assume others as people who just did point to point and not connect through.

So many things that in my eyes were sooooo easy to fix, yet here we are mourning the loss of a fabulous operation, It will be hugely missed by me.

Time for Pete to change one of the site adverts....

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Seeing as the slots was ex-BMI, and BMI was VS's domestic feeder airline it's fair to assume they wanted Little Red to feed into the long haul. So even if the planes were 90% full (which would make a full catering service and cleanup before landing on LHR-MAN near impossible) if it was still majority point-to-point VS/DL would still see it as a failure and abandon ship.

By all accounts the MAN route performed best for connecting traffic but it wasn't enough. Plus, of course, those slots were VS/DL's to use as they pleased so they axed it as soon as they could.

EDI and ABZ were far more point-to-point and even though EDI in particular had very healthy loads they just didn't fit into the new VS/DL strategy.

It's now all about connecting with DL's US hubs so I'd put money on Minneapolis being the next new route.

I wondered about Minneapolis as well, but DL already have a direct service to there. With SLC heading to LHR next year that should have every DL hub being fed from London.

I'm sad about LR though in all honesty I only really ever used it as a means of getting some cheap TPs by spending weekends in EDI. Mind you the service was always great when I used it. I just don't think it was marketed enough.