Virgin Atlantic to launch flights to Sao Paulo in 2020

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In an interesting development, Virgin Atlantic has announced that it will be launching flights between London Heathrow and Sao Paulo in Brazil in 2020.

It will be a daily service, although flight times and the exact start date have not yet been released. It will use a Boeing 787 aircraft so you won’t get the brand new Upper Class which is going onto the A350 fleet – and which will be launched on 8th April.

This is Virgin’s first route into South America. It will go up against British Airways and LATAM, who both offer direct services from Heathrow. The press release stresses that Virgin Holidays will be launching a full programme to Brazil alongside the launch, which implies that the leisure arm of the group now has some say over where the airline chooses to fly.

Tickets will be on sale “later in 2019” so don’t start looking for cash or Flying Club redemption seats just yet.

We will do a further article when seats become bookable.

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: