2nd June, 2020:
▪ Airline set to return to 17 additional destinations across the network, including Barbados, Tel Aviv, Mumbai, Miami, San Francisco and Las Vegas planned from 1st August.
▪ Flights from Barbados to London Heathrow scheduled to start on 2nd August. Flights from Antigua, Montego Bay, and Tobago will return in October.
▪ Restart of routes dependent on travel restrictions lifting around the world
▪ Additional measures put in place at the airport and onboard to ensure health and safety of our customers and our people.
Virgin Atlantic has announced its plan to restart passenger flying to 17 additional destinations from August 2020.
Following the airline’s announcement that services from London Heathrow are expected to resume from 20th July 2020 onwards, Virgin Atlantic has unveiled more detailed plans that will see passenger flying restart to many destinations across the airline’s network.
Juha Jarvinen, Chief Commercial Officer, Virgin Atlantic commented: “As countries around the world begin to relax travel restrictions, we look forward to welcoming our customers back onboard and flying them safely to many destinations across our network. From 20th July we are planning to resume some services and then from 1st August onwards, we will resume passenger flying to 17 additional destinations around the world including Tel Aviv, Miami, Lagos and San Francisco,”
“However, we are monitoring external conditions extremely closely, in particular the travel restrictions many countries have in place including the 14 day quarantine policy for travellers entering the UK. We know that as the Covid-19 crisis subsides, air travel will be a vital enabler of the UK’s economic recovery. Therefore, we are calling for UK Government to continually review its quarantine measures and instead look at a multi-layered approach of carefully targeted public health and screening measures, including air bridges, which will support a successful and safe restart of international air travel for passengers and businesses.”
Virgin Atlantic planned return to flying from London Heathrow Terminal 2 (subject to change and dependent on travel restrictions)
Virgin Atlantic will operate temporarily from Terminal 2 at Heathrow, due to HAL’s terminal consolidation. Virgin Atlantic will return to its much-loved home at London Heathrow Terminal 3 when demand at Heathrow grows, enabling Terminal 3 to reopen
Virgin Atlantic has taken the difficult decision to delay the restart of its London Heathrow to Orlando service and it will now resume on 24th August 2020. Seasonal services from Glasgow and Belfast to Orlando will resume for selected dates in summer 2021. We will continue to monitor our network on an ongoing basis and expect more flights from London Heathrow and Manchester to resume in September and October 2020.
Our Caribbean office in Barbados will re-open on the 4th of August for passenger bookings and enquiries and we will be available for agency calls from mid-July, should you need support. We are looking forward to working with you once again.
We are continuing to monitor our network on an ongoing basis and expect to add flights from Manchester to Barbados as part of our Winter 20/21 schedule.
Of course, the health and safety of our people and our customers, is paramount. Virgin Atlantic is implementing additional measures to offer peace of mind in the airport and when taking to the skies**.
I also wanted to let you know we’ve updated our policy on change fees. For customers who were due to travel between 12th June – 30th September 2020, and rebook to travel before 30th November 2020, we’ll continue to waive both the change fee and any fare difference.
Your Health & Wellbeing
**The health and safety of our customers and our teams remains our absolute priority onboard, Virgin Atlantic continues to adhere to and often exceed the guidance and regulation of the different authorities involved, including the World Health Organization (WHO), Public Health England (PHE) Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). We are implementing the following health and safety measures in response to Covid-19:
At the airports ▪ Proactive health screening (via questionnaire and verbal interviews) all our customers and denying boarding if any questions are answered positively. ▪ We are advocating for the use of temperature checks to be administered upon arrival at the airport for the safety of all our customers and people, working closely with our airport partners to implement this. ▪ Adhering to social distancing measures at check in and boarding gates to limit the number of customers in queues to avoid crowding. ▪ Customers will be encouraged to check in 24 hours before or use the self-serve check in and bag drop to minimise contact. All check in areas and surfaces will be cleaned regularly with high-grade products, tested to be effective against viruses. ▪ Encouraging customers to use hand sanitizer stations at the check in and gate area for customers convenience and cleanliness. ▪ Our people will be wearing face masks when in close contact with our customers. ▪ We’re working closely with our colleagues at the airports to ensure customers are safe as they pass through security. Security trays are wiped after use, security teams will be wearing masks and customers can expect reduced lanes in this area to ensure social distancing. ▪ All the seating and gate area around boarding will be sanitised to a high standard to offer customers peace of mind as they wait to board their flight. ▪ We’re limiting boarding to 10 customers at a time, starting from the back of the aircraft to minimise contact between customers. ▪ On boarding, we’re asking all customers to scan their own boarding pass and hold up their passport for inspection to minimize contact.
Onboard
▪ To ensure our customers have space onboard, where possible, some seats will not be available, and they will be marked with special pillows.
▪ Everyone flying with us will receive a Health Pack, a PPE kit with medical grade masks, surface wipes and hand sanitizer. We’re asking all customers and our crew to wear their masks for the duration of the flight.
▪ We’ve temporarily removed some items onboard including Vera, our inflight magazine and our retail therapy service, to minimize contact between customers. Customers can still use our pre-order service from our great range of products in advance of their flight.
▪ We’ve reduced some of our food and drink on board and offering our meals in simplified packaging to make sure we can keep interactions between crew and customers to a minimum.
▪ We have put meticulous cleaning measures in place, disinfecting the aircraft before each flight, using hospital grade, registered disinfecting product, tested to be highly effective against viruses.
▪ We use fogging (electrostatic spraying) of high-grade disinfectant in all our cabins before every flight.
▪ The cabin environment is one of the safest environments due to the vertical air circulation and filtration, with all air going through highly effective High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters that remove dust, allergens, bacteria, viruses and other particles from cabin air (testing shows a removal efficiency of 99.999%)
▪ We have isolation areas in place on each flight for any customers or crew who may potentially present symptoms onboard.
Thank you, as always, for all your support. We’re so glad to be taking to the skies again, and looking forward to working with you as closely as ever for 2020 and beyond Fly safe, fly well.
This post originally appeared as a press release from Virgin Atlantic’s website.