Virgin Atlantic is dropping flights to St Lucia and moving Havana to Heathrow
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According to travel trade reports, Virgin Atlantic is to cancel its route to St Lucia from 8th June 2020.
Virgin currently has three flights per week from London Gatwick to St Lucia. One of these slots will be used to increase services to Antigua, which will increase to 4 x weekly.
Selected Antigua services will now carry on to Grenada and Tobago. These routes are currently tagged onto the St Lucia services.
There is an implication in the local press coverage that Virgin Atlantic had demanded explicit or implicit subsidies worth $2.5m from St Lucia in order to continue flights. This could have been, for example, via a payment for a marketing campaign in the UK, or via heavy discounts on landing fees. The Government was unwilling to meet these demands.
There are still nine services per week from the UK to St Lucia. As well as the daily British Airways service, Tui and Thomas Cook each run a weekly service.
It is not clear what is happening to Virgin Atlantic passengers with bookings beyond 8th June but they will presumably be moved to the BA service.
….. and Virgin Atlantic is moving Havana
From the same date, 8th June, Virgin Atlantic is moving its Havana service from London Gatwick to London Heathrow.
The flight will switch to an Airbus A330-300 from an ex-Air Berlin A330-200, which will see the number of Upper Class seats increase from 19 to 31.
How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (April 2024)
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, the Reward+ card has a bonus of 15,000 Virgin Points):
Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard
15,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review
Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard
A generous earning rate for a free card at 0.75 points per £1 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.
American Express Preferred Rewards Gold
Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review
The Platinum Card from American Express comes with 40,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 40,000 Virgin Points.
The Platinum Card from American Express
40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review
Small business owners should consider the two American Express Business cards. Points convert at 1:1 into Virgin Points.
American Express Business Platinum
40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review
American Express Business Gold
20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year 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.)
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