FEW CITIES in the world cansupport two directly competinghome airlines. American playssecond fiddle to United at Chicago;JAL and ANA enjoy a comfortableduopoly in Tokyo; and Virgin Atlanticcompetes aggressively against IAG’sBritish Airways in London. But Virginonly flies long haul, with a heavy focuson the Atlantic, and had a relativelysmall overall footprint in London -with 3% of the slots at Heathrow in2019 and 1.5% of those at Gatwick.Long haul operations have beenbadly hit by the coronavirus crisis,and are expected to take a long timeto recover to pre‐pandemic levels.
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