Virgin Atlantic Airways won its bid to take all 12 pairs of London Heathrow remedy slots demanded by the European Commission following the takeover by International Airlines Group of British Midland.

The giving up of slots was a condition of the takeover deal; IAG also owns British Airways.

The offer of the 12 slot pairs to Virgin means that the UK carrier will begin multiple daily flights to Edinburgh and Aberdeen from Mar. 31, 2013. Virgin previously said it would allocate seven of the pairs to those routes. Virgin also announced it intends to use two pairs of its own slots to launch Heathrow-Manchester (UK) service.

Virgin intends to wet-lease three Airbus A319s to operate its short-haul flights.