I'm going to come out of retirement to respond to this, having just matched status and flown VX long haul for the first time this last weekend to see what the fuss was all about. Call it my thanks back to the people posting on the Elevate forum, since those posts are what convinced me to hop on board.

I could go into a long dissection of airline microeconomics, but while I've not been around FT for a while I'm sure there are already probably multiple threads and posts on them. I've got better things to do on a workday then post a detailed explanation, but those might be worth searching for, since most of the concerns people unfamiliar with the industry post about revolve around things that might affect RASM.

Turns out that's not that important. Balance sheet structure and CASM what people who know the industry care about, and VX isn't in bad shape with either. VX isn't in WN territory on CASM - I won't bore you with the details of how and why - but they're definitely below legacy standards, it's not going up, and as they continue expanding they should get some economies of scale to drive it down.

As far as the balance sheet, one thing to also keep in mind is that Virgin Group can't own equity past 25% - but that does not mean that if a liquidity crunch arises (which it doesn't look like they're in danger of at this point) that a debt investment can't be made. Whether or not it's in VG's best interest as a separate entity to make such a debt contribution on terms that don't provide appropriate returns is a legit question, but there are some advantages in being private and tightly controlled so that shareholders can't howl if you do such a thing.

VX has some work to do, but no, they're in no real risk of going under anytime soon.