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Virgin Atlantic announces four new A350 routes and an extra daily flight to Delhi

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Virgin Atlantic has now confirmed its Summer 2020 schedule, which will begin on the 29th March.

Virgin has been slowly ramping up its UK-India routes, which suffered a loss when codeshare partner Jet Airways went into administration.

It clearly thinks there is extra flying to be had which hasn’t been mopped up by other airlines, and is introducing a second daily flight to Delhi.  This is in addition to the new Mumbai route which launched a couple of weeks ago.  The new Delhi flight goes on sale on 23rd November.

Virgin Atlantic announces new A350 routes

Next summer Virgin will also start putting its A350s on other routes. Up until now, all the A350s were going on the London-New York route but we will now see a bit of variety in the schedule.

This means that you will still find a variety of Virgin Atlantic aircraft flying to New York, since Virgin will not have enough A350 to run them on all seven daily flights as well as the new destinations.

This is where you will find the A350:

Johannesburg will see the A350 from March, on VS 449/450
Los Angeles gets a daily A350 in April, on VS 23/24
San Francisco gets a daily A350 in May, on VS19/20
Lagos will get a daily A350 in August, on VS 411/412

As a reminder, Virgin Atlantic’s A350 comes with a new Upper Class Suite reviewed here, as well as a redesigned social ‘Loft’ area for business class passengers.  It is a major improvement on the current Upper Class product.

As always, there may be last minute equipment changes or timetable alterations.  These new services will be using aircraft from the 2nd batch of A350 deliveries and the dates may slip.


How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards

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 18,000 Virgin Points and the free card has a bonus of 3,000 Virgin Points):

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

18,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

3,000 bonus points, no fee and 1 point for every £1 you spend 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.)

Comments (137)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Shoestring says:

    Just been checking the £1 car rentals:
    – Europcar direct/ Hertz direct plenty available but only until end Dec (it wasn’t an exhaustive check)
    – Driiveme – some/ limited available (I only saw Hertz) but you could book up until 31/3 – though cancellation is £25 so I thought I might wait a bit in case my preference Europcar direct comes up later for Easter outward (no cancellation fee) or Hertz direct (no cancellation fee)

  • Steinberg says:

    What’s interesting about the VS expansion is that as things stand the UK would be up to it’s 56 bilateral agreed flights and could potentially stop BA from increasing service as it had hoped to DEL/BOM… nothing stoping them increasing capacity through aircraft type though.

  • Nate1309 says:

    @Rob @Rhys is there any chance of a detailed article on using the Virgin Atlantic CC voucher? I have one and will trigger another soon and don’t really know what to do with it. TIA

    • Nick_C says:

      If it was a physical paper voucher I could think of a use for it …

    • aDifferentSimon says:

      I have one of these but don’t know how to use it – is it phone only?
      Let a Lloyds upgrade voucher expire last month which is much more valuable. rats.

  • Nick says:

    BTW Virgin have dropped their second daily flight to JNB from the end of March. It was removed just over a week ago – annoying because award availability vanished overnight on the flight I was going to book 🙁

  • Russ says:

    Etihad news is most welcome. Now if they could take a view on the high numbers of points needed to redeem on their own flights I’m sure more people would use them. But agree with others here we need confirmation from Etihad on this and, what classes as qualifying spend. Nice little job for someone this afternoon 😉

    • Rob says:

      It’s OK for Abu Dhabi runs – 124,000 return vs 120,000 Avios on peak date. Problem is the taxes which, for connecting itineraries, are huge because you pay per leg.

      • Russ says:

        Yes that doesn’t sound bad at all. Plus I note further on you suggest more award availability than BA. Thank you.

  • Craig says:

    Not sure it would count for status/mattress run as it isn’t booked directly?

  • William Squires says:

    Is there any route to a free Amex Platinum now that Gold is a credit card which can’t be upgraded?

    Does Green to Gold work?

  • Benilyn says:

    OT: I asked people here so sharing my experience. My VA to Hilton points posted in ~9.5 days, and this was the first time I did it.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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