Virgin Atlantic moves its Cape Town return flights to overnight

If you have Virgin Atlantic flights to Cape Town booked for this winter, you may need to take action.

Virgin Atlantic has moved the return flight from daytime (10.15am, arriving in Heathrow at 8.10pm) to an overnight flight.

You will now depart Cape Town at 9.50pm, arriving in Heathrow at 7.40am.

For some reason flights have not been adjusted yet for existing passengers. The Virgin Atlantic website still shows my booking for December returning at 10.15am.

I am assuming that passengers will be moved to the evening flight on the same day.

However, this may be a problem for you depending on your personal circumstances. If you want to move your return flight back by a day then I suspect you may need to call.

If you definitely want a day flight, you may (or may not) be able to get Virgin Atlantic to move you to the Air France flight. This leaves Cape Town at 8.50am, landing in Heathrow at 9.25pm after a change in Paris.

You are also legally entitled to a refund.

Personally, I am probably stuck with the overnight flight back because I need the tier points from Virgin Atlantic to get back to Silver and thus increase the value of my Virgin Atlantic credit card voucher! Virgin Atlantic only gives tier points on redemptions on its own flights and not partners.

What isn’t clear is why Virgin Atlantic is doing this. It is short of aircraft at the moment due to issues with the Boeing 787-9 fleet and keeping an aircraft on the ground in Cape Town for 14 hours each day is not exactly maximising your fleet.

With a lot of tickets already sold for the winter season it won’t make a lot of difference in the short term to revenues, although long term overnight flights from South Africa have already been more popular.

Thanks to Matt for flagging.

PS. In one other change, Virgin Atlantic has brought forward the start of its Cape Town season from 26th October to 13th October