Virgin Connect (Exeter) will evaluate adding larger aircraft to its fleet once its partnership with Virgin Atlantic (VS, London Heathrow) fully kicks in, Chief Executive Officer Mark Anderson told Air Transport World.
"Our partnership with Virgin, and perhaps others in future, definitely give us the opportunity to look at other aircraft in future. We’re not about to make any crazy decisions and go off and buy a whole fleet of jets, but we’re not going to stay static and keep a fleet of Dash 8-400s forever," he said.
Virgin Connect will be the new brand for flybe. (2002) starting in 2020. Earlier this year, the British regional carrier was acquired by Connect Airways, a consortium including Virgin Atlantic, Stobart Group, and Cyrus Capital.
According to the ch-aviation fleets module, flybe. currently operates fifty-four Dash 8-400s. It also operates four ATR72-600s under a white label ACMI contract with SAS Scandinavian Airlines (SK, Copenhagen Kastrup), as well as eleven E175s and four E195s on its own network. The larger Embraer regional jets are due to be phased-out by the end of 2019.
