For the first time in the UK, Virgin Atlantic will fly short-haul flights from Heathrow to Aberdeen and Edinburgh in Scotland, after British Airways was forced by European competition authorities to relinquish the 14 slot pairs at Heathrow against the approval of its merger with BMI, whose parent company IAG bought from Lufthansa last year for £186m amidst protest from Virgin.

Plans are on for Virgin Atlantic to fly to Nice and discussions in this regard are ongoing with EU and the Civil Aviation Authority, which are to decide how to assign the two slot pairs designated for Moscow.

Virgin plans to run multiple daily flights from Edinburgh and Aberdeen to London Heathrow. Virgin has already launched a new Heathrow to Manchester route next year. The news comes as a blow to IAG, as British Airways merger with Iberia looks increasingly costly. The plan was to share operating costs between the airlines to minimise overheads, but the Spanish airline is losing so much money, about €1.7m (£1.4m) a day, which is eating into the UK flag carrier’s profit.

Virgin is likely to announce the exact timetable in the next fortnight, and will lease an Airbus A320, which typically seats around 150 passengers, for its UK flights. However, doubts remain as to how Virgin will position its brand on short-haul flights and whether it can make profits on routes where bmi struggled.

Virgin has maintained that its business case rested on winning all the “remedy slots” to feed in enough transfer traffic at Heathrow to its long-haul flights to the US and elsewhere.

Related:
Easyjet to make travel easier, extra London flights announced
Third runway for Heathrow back on Tory agenda