Virgin Atlantic Flying Club - Virgin America Plane in Montreal

I flew out of Montreal yesterday and noticed a Virgin America (A319 or A320) plane parked at the airport. It was parked near a hangar, away from the main terminal. Any ideas what this plane was doing in Montreal? Is Virgin America starting to train flight crews and doing so in Montreal? (Just to be clear this was definitely a Virgin America and not a Virgin Atlantic plane).

I flew out of Montreal yesterday and noticed a Virgin America (A319 or A320) plane parked at the airport. It was parked near a hangar, away from the main terminal. Any ideas what this plane was doing in Montreal? Is Virgin America starting to train flight crews and doing so in Montreal? (Just to be clear this was definitely a Virgin America and not a Virgin Atlantic plane).

MX or getting a paint job probably. YUL does a lot of heavy MX and they also have a paint facility... There is also a Virgin America plane in Utica, NY having a paint job and one in PDX as well.

Interior fitting specifically from what I understand. I thought all paint jobs were done down in Greenville for them, but it appears they're being worked on everywhere right now.

I just flew SFO->YUL and I saw several Virgin America planes with some only having the red engines. I was very excited and can't wait to see them flying out of SFO.

They are going nowhere at the moment. Lead aircraft N621VA has been stored there since March, the others more recent. All are factory-new. Montreal seems to be a favourite place to store aircraft, Delta did the same when they parked their MD11s a couple of years ago (yes, and right through the Quebec winter as well ! )

That Virgin America managed to get such expensive assets stuck going nowhere shows a bit of poor management. They must have burned through many $m of their startup capital doing this. Of course it's all because of the vicious legal challenges to their operation coming from the US majors, led by Continental. But they should have had a contingency plan for this event.

If they have to go back to SRB for more capital then it will be another chance for Continental's lawyers to start all over again saying the financial basis they are challenging has changed. They are just hoping to drag it all out to cripple VAm's startup.

Apparently they are now looking to do some short-term leases of the aircraft, which presumably means even VAm think the approvals are coming through no time soon.

I just saw on bbc news 24 - fastrack that Virgin America has approval to fly and will start services soon. Initially sfo-jfk with two planes. They have plans to expand to 30 planes. I tried to find a link on the BBC website but there were none to this story specifically.