The carrier’s last flight will be in September 2015 – only two and a half years after it launched.
Virgin Atlantic started the service after the European Commission awarded it a number of take-off and landing slots at Heathrow following International Airlines Group’s takeover of BMI.
Virgin Atlantic chief executive Craig Kreeger said the number of slots handed over was “totally inadequate”, which did not come “close to BA’s network position”.
“While this challenged environment meant Little Red ultimately did not deliver the results we had hoped, this certainly will not dampen our enthusiasm to try new things in the future,”
“We have always fought for what we believe is best for our customers and we will continue to do so.”
The President of Virgin Atlantic, Sir Richard Branson, said: “When the competition authorities allowed British Airways to take over British Midland and all of its slots, we feared there was little we could do to challenge BA’s huge domestic and European network built through decades of dominance.
“To remedy this, we were offered a meagre package of slots with a number of constraints on how to use them and we decided to lease a few planes on a short term basis to give it our best shot. The odds were stacked against us and sadly we just couldn’t attract enough corporate business on these routes.”
Little Red’s daily services between London Heathrow and Manchester will continue until the end of March 2015, while its flights between London Heathrow and Edinburgh and Aberdeen will continue throughout summer 2015 with the final flights in September 2015.
The decision on the airline’s short haul carrier follows a major review of Virgin Atlantic’s wider network.
Last month the carrier made a series of changes to its long-haul network, adding a new daily service from Heathrow to Detroit but dropped routes to Tokyo and Mumbai in a series of changes to its schedule.
