Virgin America has had a great experience with its new flights between DFW and Los Angeles as well as San Francisco.  So much so, they’re adding one new frequency on each route by terminating its LAX – Toronto flights. 

This is what I mean by it being time to compete with American Airlines.  That big bully that everyone sees in the DFW area is a lot more vulnerable than it may look at first glance.  AA has fought back some on those routes but with VA’s load factors running in the 80 percents and their advance bookings running about 70 percent, it’s clear that a new, service oriented entrant can compete with AA.  Especially on routes that have been traditionally dominated by AA over the past 10+ years. 

Once VA gets these flights settled and tweaked and finds itself satisfied, look for new flights out of DFW.  I see opportunities for them on DFW to New York city, Boston and Seattle.  All three routes are the non-stop domain of AA and all three have relatively high fares.  Just like the DFW-LAX and DFW-SFO routes had.  Virgin has a presence in each of those cities which would make it easier to integrate routes from DFW to those destinations as well.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax