The problem is that if they wait for them to go "belly up", it will take years to buy the planes. There will be a long line of creditors...Same reason they can't get the Skybus planes now (other than the two they own).
Well, true, it has to go through the BK proceedings- though judges have amazing powers of going "no, we're going to do this, so that the senior creditors get their cash" if someone presents a good plan in court. But yeah, when the lawyers are involved the wheels of justice DO grind slow but fine...
I would think that honestly, the gates would be more useful right up front- especially since anything Virgin America buys to fly in their fleet has to have Red installed in it anyway, or we get repeats of the fiasco with the dark A319, and that's not exactly an instantaneous process.
I think that's a secondary factor. There are a number of reasons why FLL is appealing over MIA that would probably offset the benefit of having VS there, and currently there are no feeder agreements. Plus, it's a half hour bus ride---Better than Continental's Newark Airlink ;-)
True, there isn't a feeder agreement NOW, but I would think they'll want that up and running once the VX route system is fleshed out a bit more. I know I'd be awfully tempted to fly SEA-SFO/LAX-LHR on Virgin given my VX experience if the price was competitive.