Virgin Atlantic Would Like To Service Auckland & Sydney Sometime In The Future

by Zac George
a plane on a runway

Yesterday Virgin Atlantic announced some really exciting news that passengers are going to really enjoy. The airline is set to expand their operations at London’s Heathrow airport and with this expansion comes a range of new services that will be introduced in the coming years.

Altogether the airline will add 84 destinations which is very impressive. The airline stated that 35 of these new services will be from around the world, 37 of those routes will be operated within Europe and the remaining 12 routes will be domestic services.

Below is the full map the the airline provided in the press release which can be found here.

a map of europe with blue dots and white text

European expansion

Per Virgin Atlantic CEO, Shai Weiss:

“Never has the need for effective competition and choice at Heathrow Airport been more evident than during this summer of disruption, which has brought misery for tens thousands of travellers.  Britain, and those who travel to it, deserve better than this.  Air passengers need a choice and Virgin Atlantic is ready to deliver when Heathrow expands.

 

“Heathrow has been dominated by one airline group for far too long. The third runway is a once in a lifetime opportunity to change the status quo and create a second flag carrier. This would lower fares and give real choice to passengers, as well giving Britain a real opportunity to boost its trade and investment links around the world. Changing the way take-off and landing slots are allocated for this unique and vital increase in capacity at the nation’s hub airport will create the right conditions for competition and innovation to thrive.”

a map of the world with blue and red dots

Global expansion

As I try to focus on airline news and movements in the Asia/Pacific area, I’ll be talking about Sydney and Auckland.

Virgin Atlantic used to operate a daily service from London to Sydney via Hong Kong however, that was ceased a few years ago. The service was operated from 2004 until 2014 and it was being operated by the airlines’ A340-600.

it was a difficult period in that time for aviation and Virgin Atlantic unfortunately felt that. There was just too much competition on the route that it just wasn’t viable for them to continue running a service.

Competition on the route is still fierce as ever and Qantas are making it clear they want to be the first to connect London and Sydney non-stop, it’s nice to see another airline that could possibly want to do the same.

If they don’t do a direct service, I wonder if they would do something similar to what they did before or do the Auckland leg like Emirates used to? It’ll be interesting to see what comes in the future.

a plane flying in the sky

Virgin Atlantic A340-600 (Image – Rory Delaney)

Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia recently put forward an agreement to the ACCC to be able to work together more as they’ve had a partnership for some years already.

This means passengers will have access to a lot more codeshare services as well as enhanced benefits for people holding status.

The tightened partnership could be early signs of what Virgin could be planning and that’s really interesting if that’s the case.

Featured Image – Rory Delaney

Would you travel on Virgin Atlantic when they start to serve Auckland and Sydney?

 

 

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