This week in air travel news Virgin Atlantic announced a new weekly flight from San Francisco, the next routes to debut its new A350 aircraft and a new second daily service to Delhi as part of its summer 2020 schedule.
Virgin Atlantic will be adding a new weekly service from San Francisco, departing on a Friday. The airline will fly twice daily between the Golden Gate City and Heathrow, offering more options for both business and leisure travelers. The airline will fly its new A350 on this route from May 2020 and, coupled with the new weekly flight, will boost capacity by 40,000 seats for the summer season.
The new flights to Delhi will commence on March 29, 2020 and will go on sale on Saturday, November 23. The new flight will depart Heathrow in the morning, complementing the airline’s current evening departure. Together with Delta, Virgin Atlantic will offer connections between Delhi and New York JFK, Boston, Detroit and Atlanta via Heathrow.
The airline will also be re-timing its Mumbai flight to an evening departure from Heathrow, offering a more convenient choice for business customers.
By August, Virgin Atlantic’s A350 aircraft will fly to five destinations across its network and all its flights to Africa will be on the new aircraft. The next routes to debut the aircraft from summer 2020 are:
- Johannesburg will debut the A350 with a daily service from March 2020
- From April 2020, the A350 will fly daily to Los Angeles
- There will be a daily A350 service to San Francisco from May 2020
- There will be a daily A350 service to Lagos from August 2020
Virgin Atlantic’s A350 aircraft took to the skies in September with an inaugural flight to New York with a totally redesigned Upper Class cabin complete with Loft area as well as tailcam and new in-seat ordering feature.
Meanwhile, in regional carrier news, ExpressJet Airlines, a United Express carrier, began assigning pilots to its Embraer E175 aircraft base of operations at Chicago O'Hare International Airport. The new facility, which is expected to open January 1, 2020, will be in addition to ExpressJet's existing ERJ145 pilot, flight attendant, and maintenance bases in Chicago. This is ExpressJet's second E175 base, after the first base opened at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport.
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