Virgin Atlantic & Delta introduce more transatlantic services

Virgin Atlantic and Delta Airlines have announced an extension to their transatlantic partnership with the introduction of six new daily services to their customers.

Starting this weekend the joint schedule offers up to 39 return transatlantic flights a day between the UK and a total of 15 destinations across the USA.

Virgin is launching additional services between Heathrow and Los Angeles, Atlanta & San Francisco. 

Further services are being introduced to Philadelphia, New York JFK, Detroit, Orlanda and Las Vegas.

To read more about the service improvements click here. 

Virgin Atlantic Airways returns to profit for 2014

Virgin Atlantic has delivered on its plan to return to profitability within 2 years from February 2013.

During the year to 31 December 2014 it made a profit of £14.4 million against a loss for the previous year of £51 million - an improvement of £65.4 million.

For a third consecutive year the airline reports that its passenger satisfaction scores have increased showing an 11% improvement since 2012.  On time performance remains high with 85.5% of flights leaving within 15 minutes of their scheduled times.

To read more about Virgin Atlantic's results click here.

Virgin Atlantic lays on more seats from Manchester

Virgin Atlantic has recently announced that it will be providing an additional 8,000 seats over the busy summer holiday period from Manchester to Orlando and Las Vegas. The additional seats will be available on a total of 24 outbound flights, and 12 return flights.

Manchester is the UK's third biggest airport after Heathrow & Gatwick, and the largest outside the London airports.  Manchester airport claims that the announcement reflects their efforts to persuade travellers to fly from local terminals and not just from those around London.

For more on this announcement click here.

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Well Done Virgin Flight VS43

What heroes!

All credit to the crew of Virgin Atlantic flight VS43 yesterday.  

The Boeing 747 flight leaving London Gatwick at 11:40 yesterday en route to Las Vegas had a problem with one of its sets of undercarriage that wouldn't properly lock down.

Flight tracking shows that initially the flight followed its scheduled flight path until it had almost past Cornwall's west coast when it was seen to follow a circular path to burn off fuel before heading back towards Gatwick.

The plane with 450 people on board then entered a further fuel burn off phase over Sussex and the coast (at several times almost directly overhead us at Luggage UK), before making a text book landing at Gatwick.  Cabin crew reportedly succeeded in keeping passengers relatively calm even though they were instructed to go into the brace position for landing. 

Passengers on board praised the skill of the flight crew.  Well done to all involved.

Following the touchdown at around 16:00 Gatwick's runways were closed until around 19:00 while the plane was checked and moved.