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Virgin Atlantic announces four new A350 routes and an extra daily flight to Delhi

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Virgin Atlantic has now confirmed its Summer 2020 schedule, which will begin on the 29th March.

Virgin has been slowly ramping up its UK-India routes, which suffered a loss when codeshare partner Jet Airways went into administration.

It clearly thinks there is extra flying to be had which hasn’t been mopped up by other airlines, and is introducing a second daily flight to Delhi.  This is in addition to the new Mumbai route which launched a couple of weeks ago.  The new Delhi flight goes on sale on 23rd November.

Virgin Atlantic announces new A350 routes

Next summer Virgin will also start putting its A350s on other routes. Up until now, all the A350s were going on the London-New York route but we will now see a bit of variety in the schedule.

This means that you will still find a variety of Virgin Atlantic aircraft flying to New York, since Virgin will not have enough A350 to run them on all seven daily flights as well as the new destinations.

This is where you will find the A350:

Johannesburg will see the A350 from March, on VS 449/450
Los Angeles gets a daily A350 in April, on VS 23/24
San Francisco gets a daily A350 in May, on VS19/20
Lagos will get a daily A350 in August, on VS 411/412

As a reminder, Virgin Atlantic’s A350 comes with a new Upper Class Suite reviewed here, as well as a redesigned social ‘Loft’ area for business class passengers.  It is a major improvement on the current Upper Class product.

As always, there may be last minute equipment changes or timetable alterations.  These new services will be using aircraft from the 2nd batch of A350 deliveries and the dates may slip.


How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards

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 Rewards credit card

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

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

Virgin Rewards Plus credit card

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:

Nectar American Express

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with 30,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 30,000 Virgin Points:

American Express Platinum card Amex

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Virgin Points

(Want to earn more Virgin Points?  Click here to see our recent articles on Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club and click here for our home page with the latest news on earning and spending other airline and hotel points.)

Comments (137)

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

  • Nick_C says:

    Surprised at Virgin taking A350s of the JFK route. I think the 350s would have given them a serious competitive advantage over BA. Now it will be pot luck whether you get the new Upper Class or the awful old cabin. But I guess they know what they’re doing.

    If I had booked an A350 and found it deliberately switched to an older plane, I would not be happy.

    • Ben says:

      They hadn’t announced what routes they’d be on on the summer timetable so no one would be disappointed!

    • Rhys says:

      I don’t think they are removing it from JFK so to speak, they just won’t be flooding the market with additional A350s. I presume the handful of services on the A350 to JFK will remain.

      • PJJ says:

        I checked dates for 6 dates apart, end August early September and A350 not shown at all

        • Rhys says:

          Interesting – I wonder if the summer aircraft movements have been properly put through the systems yet? Would be very surprising for them to take it off JFK.

  • DS says:

    OT: Are there any sign-up codes for Gett that still works?

    • Rob says:

      You can try my referral code of GTSZFWS. Unhelpfully it says ‘your friend gets a discount on their first ride which varies by city’ which is not hugely helpful.

  • GRIMZ says:

    OT, Sorry posted this yesterday but never got a reply ) :
    I have booked my outbound to LAX 355days out with BA. When my return opens up in a few weeks can I get this added as one booking to lower my taxes?
    I know this can be done with a 2 4 1 voucher but wasn’t sure about a single booking.

    • Roberto says:

      I doubt it. In recent times I have found its treated as 2 x one ways and if youre going to the US thats more expensive than a return. YMMV.

      • GRIMZ says:

        So I guess I would have been better waiting for both legs to become available before I booked?

        • Anna says:

          If you make the return booking by phone they may adjust the taxes so you’re not paying more. I have done this, although it was a couple of years ago.

        • BJ says:

          If you follow Anna’s advice request them to change it to a return ticket as opposed to asking them to add return sectors. This might just influence thd way they deal with your request. You could also take the risk of cancelling outbound sears in the hope that they return to award inventory.

  • Andrew says:

    Virgin Bits…

    If you have access to Corporate Perks, powered by NextJump, you may have an 8% offer on Virgin flights until this Sunday.

    Just booked a Upper Class Flex return for my boss. 😉

  • Lazy says:

    Made an app to alert me as soon as reward availability opened up on specific flights on Virgin Atlantic. – Got to experience A350 Upper Class last week! Would anyone else here want to use this if it were publicly available?

    • Chrisasaurus says:

      Certainly but recall that reward flight finder was blocked from doing this and that might well happen to you if you get noticed…

    • Craig says:

      Has anyone seen seatspy? This seems to have Virgin availability?

      • BJ says:

        Looks like RFF in disguise.

        • Graeme says:

          It is, but I’m finding certain aspects of it more user-friendly. Being able to see reward availability in all classes is really handy.

          It lags behind in other aspects though, so I’m signed up to both at the moment for the flight I’m after.

      • Rhys says:

        It does, but don’t expect it to last once Virgin notice…

        • Craig says:

          Which I find odd; the Virgin system is so clunky they should either put it right or allow 3rd party access.

          • Rhys says:

            We agree!

          • Lady London says:

            I thought legally every app has to provide api access? I am not sure how airlines operating in the UK can get away with blocking access to retrieve data. I work with a commercial application that has had to provide access via api’s. For sure they would not have wanted to allow access, but had to.

          • Lazy says:

            @Lady London do you have a source for the claim that every company has to publish an API? I’ve heard it on this site more than once, but never outside of here. I know banks have recently been required to… as far as I know that’s the extent of it.

          • Lady London says:

            Its been the case for a while and I do remember reading a paper on it about 18 months ago but I don’t know what the legislation is called. It didn’t just apply to finance systems. Perhaps a legal eagle on here will know which piece of legislation it is.

          • AndyGWP says:

            There is no law for a commercial business to expose access mechanisms to its data (or access to its API)

  • bill says:

    Regular readers may recall that I posted about an issue i ran into during a travel claim with axa (via amex platinum). I submitted a travel inconvenience claim for disruption during our journey home. the missed flight was a uk domestic easyjet flight part-purchased with a voucher and the remainder using my amex platinum. axa said it wasnt eligible since it wasnt paid for using the card. they cited avios plus card as being ok. I explained that easyjet flight club dont issue points but they had given me a voucher that had a monetary value and that i hadnt used any other credit card (only used amex platinum). i’m happy to report that following a review axa have paid my claim for the domestic uk replacement flights that we purchased to get us home. (the joys of living in the uk regions !).

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.