Virgin Atlantic drops four services to focus on US
Contributors are not employed, compensated or governed by TD, opinions and statements are from the contributor directly
Virgin Atlantic has announced it will stop flights on several routes as it looks to reach sustained profitability by 2018.
The carrier will cancel services from Heathrow to Tokyo Narita, Mumbai, Vancouver and Cape Town next year while it focuses on its joint venture with Delta Air Lines and a strategy with transatlantic routes at its core.
The final outbound Tokyo and Mumbai flight will be on 1 February 2015 while the Vancouver route will stop on 11 October 2014. The Cape Town winter flights will operate this season but will not be renewed for next winter, ending on 27 April 2015.
Its Johannesburg and Delhi services will continue to operate, as will others in Asia, the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East.
Withdrawing the routes will see the airline focus on its transatlantic operations, with several new routes and additional services announced.
New US routes
A new daily service from Heathrow to Detroit and between Manchester and New York JFK will launch next year, while additional daily services from Heathrow to New York JFK and Los Angeles will be added.
Extra daily flights from Heathrow to Atlanta and San Francisco will also run in the summer, while an additional daily service from Heathrow to Miami will operate in the winter.
The carrier will also transfer operations with Delta which will see Virgin Atlantic fly a daily service between Manchester and Atlanta, while Delta will fly one of the UK airline’s existing Heathrow to Newark services.
The changes have been implemented to help the long-term growth of the airline, which is on target to deliver an annual profit by the end of 2014.
“Confident of this strengthened network”
Virgin Atlantic chief executive Craig Kreeger said: “Our ambition is to be profitable for the long term, earn competitive returns, and invest those into providing the very best experience for our customers on the routes they most want to fly.
“Transatlantic flying has always been at the heart of our network and our most financially successful region. Today’s announcement allows us to play to our strengths and focus our network on routes between the UK and US, as well as other critical global destinations that are most important to our customers.
“We are confident that with this strengthened network, our new aircraft and our welcoming people delivering unrivalled service, we have all the right ingredients to achieve long-term success.”
£300m into customer service
Virgin Atlantic has also announced a programme to improve its customer experience which will see GBP300 million spent in the next four years.
Soon this will come in the form of the airline’s first Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner that is due to be delivered in the coming weeks.
Comments are closed.