Bits: BA removes hot food on long short-haul routes, Virgin Atlantic launches Varadero

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News in brief:

British Airways removes hot food from Band 4 flights

In order not to appear to be unduly criticising British Airways again (see my main article today), I will assume that this is a genuine improvement to services and not a cost cutting move …..

From the end of next week, hot food is to be removed from Euro Traveller on ‘Band 4’ short haul flights. There will now be no short haul routes serving warm meals down the back. This includes:

Athens
Istanbul
Larnaca
St Petersburg
Bucharest
Sofia

The new cold meal – which we should assume is an improvement on the old hot meal – will be served in a box and not on a tray. Again, I don’t want to suggest in any way that this is a downgrade as I’m sure there are good reasons why eating out of a box is preferable to eating off a tray.

Club Europe will continue to receive a hot meal but the side salad is to be removed. Difficult to spin that bit in a positive way, to be honest, unless a lot of customers were accidentally spilling the dressing onto their clothes or something ….

Virgin Atlantic to launch Varadero in Cuba

Virgin Atlantic announced a raft of changes for Summer 2017 yesterday.

The most interesting is that, from April, Virgin will fly from Gatwick to the Cuban beach resort of Varadero, photo above. There will be one flight per week to complement the existing two flights to Havana.

The other changes are:

Gatwick to Vegas increasing from seven to nine flights per week in April and May

Gatwick to Barbados increasing from seven to nine flights per week in April

Gatwick to Montego Bay reduced from three to two flights per week in May, June, September and October

Belfast to Orlando increasing to four flights per week in late June and early July

Glasgow to Orlando increasing to four flights per week in late June and early July

Manchester to Barbados moving from one 747 flight per week to two flights on smaller A330 aircraft, with an additional third flight during the Summer school holidays

Manchester to Orlando increasing from 13 to 14 flights per week during the Summer school holidays

Remember that these changes are for 2017 and do not impact schedules for this year.

How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Virgin Points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

You can choose from two official Virgin Atlantic credit cards (apply here, one has a bonus of 15,000 points):

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

The UK’s most generous free Visa or Mastercard at 0.75 points / £1 Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 points bonus and the most generous non-Amex for day to day spending Read our full review

You can also earn Virgin Points from various American Express cards – and these have sign-up bonuses too.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for a year and comes with 20,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 20,000 Virgin Points: