See photos from the British Airways and Virgin Atlantic dual take-off at Heathrow

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• Yuff says:

  8 Nov8 November 14:57

  Nice to see the news filled with this type of headline, makes a change……

  • Rhys says:

    8 Nov8 November 17:32

    Makes a change to writing positive stuff too!

• John says:

  8 Nov8 November 16:44

  I’m hear Virgin were 81 miles ahead of BA when they landed

  • Rhys says:

    8 Nov8 November 17:32

    We beat BA 😏

    • John says:

      9 Nov9 November 07:11

      That’s not tight. I read a press release yesterday that the ‘race’ was about who would arrive on time with best fuel efficiency, and not who gets there first. Apparently to encourage greener flying.

      • Rob says:

        9 Nov9 November 08:41

        Nothing green about it, it is purely about money.

• Rich says:

  8 Nov8 November 17:25

  Just received the email from Sean Doyle about today’s events, writing about them in the future tense! Did his PR people not get the memo about it going out at 5am not 5pm. Behind the times as usual.

  • mradey says:

    9 Nov9 November 06:37

    …and I thought it was just me.

• Josephine Stewart says:

  8 Nov8 November 18:59

  Not sure if this ‘good news’ was meant to bury a ‘bad news’ story, but it looks as though BA has pulled out of Japan – for good? All BA flights to/from Tokyo are no longer bookable

  • Rob says:

    8 Nov8 November 19:40

    Was meant to return March 2022.

    However, as BA and JAL have a JV on the route so BA may be happy to let JAL run with it and use its aircraft elsewhere. It will be very short of long haul aircraft for a couple of years.

    • Andrew says:

      8 Nov8 November 20:37

      And surely JAL have a better product than BA anyway, so maybe not such a bad thing.

  • Allan says:

    8 Nov8 November 21:21

    Still seems bookable in April / May 22

• Duck Ling says:

  8 Nov8 November 19:17

  Loving the picture of ‘The Loft’ gathering.

  Virgin obvs doesn’t enforce it’s mask policy.

  • JP-MCO says:

    8 Nov8 November 19:50

    How do you manage to drink through a mask? And for the abundance of clarity, just because you pointed it out doesn’t make you anymore virtuous.

    • Geoggy says:

      9 Nov9 November 09:50

      As a clinically vulnerable patient that is still cancelling long haul flights instead of booking them, there’s a deep irony in your response. Pictures like this drill into the heart of my anxiety about returning to foreign travel. You can’t drink through a mask, you can however remove an ear hook temporarily.

      • David says:

        9 Nov9 November 11:05

        Quite agree.
        This has the optics of Boris Johnson visiting the hospital yesterday.

      • JP-MCO says:

        9 Nov9 November 12:47

        I am sympathetic to your circumstances and I don’t wish for my response to come across as insensitive but at what point will a clinically vulnerable person ever feel comfortable flying long haul again given that COVID will be endemic forever? Not to mention the many airborne pathogens that have not disappeared in the past 21 months and were around long before mask wearing became a requirement on planes.
        In all likelihood the photo in question features 100% vaccination and a negative test 3 days before departure. I am sure Virgin will enforce their mask policy if for no other reason than they wouldn’t want to fall foul of the federal government’s transport rules after 600 days of travel being suspended.
        My 92 and 93 year old grandparents currently have COVID. Both have dementia and a plethora of other co-morbidities but both are thankfully vaccinated. They are both extremely clinically vulnerable and were shielding. They were both quite ill with COVID but never to the point where they had to spend the day in bed and have almost fully recovered after 7 days. I guess I’m just trying to illustrate that, even at their age and with their many health conditions, catching COVID is not the death sentence it once was because vaccination has changed everything. Vaccination is the single best protection you can have and the overwhelming majority of people will remove their mask to eat/drink and then simply replace it again. Masks hanging off ears is a horrible sight and I can fully imagine that had they been there people would also have remarked, “they weren’t drinking at that moment so why didn’t they replace their mask”. You can’t please everybody.

        • Geoggy says:

          11 Nov11 November 07:33

          We are suffering from a pandemic of more than just a virus. We’ve also got an anecdotal evidence pandemic fuelled by social media. I’m glad your parents have recovered. Tell them you love them every day, as I wish I had that chance again. They clearly had low viral load exposure. I work in the NHS and I am full of alternative anecdotes with alternative endings. Wear a mask. Please.

• Alastair says:

  8 Nov8 November 21:13

  Really great story – been lots of fun following this today, looking forward to the report from Rhys.

  So glad to be getting back in the air…

• Polly says:

  8 Nov8 November 22:09

  Great camera work Rhys, steady hold. Lovely image of BA gathering speed and the take off. Loved keeping track this morning….great parry going on there too on VS…

• Can says:

  9 Nov9 November 00:31

  I loved the video Rhys, well done!

  • mradey says:

    9 Nov9 November 06:39

    Yes, I loved the sound of the engines with take-off power!

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