It’s an exciting time for British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, as the two airlines are both in the process of starting service with their A350s, and are also both introducing a new business class product along with that.
British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are competing to roll out their new business class seats. British Airways’ Club Suites have debuted on the A350-1000, though the airline has also scheduled flights for reconfigured 777-300ERs that will feature their new seats.
Meanwhile as of now Virgin Atlantic is just installing their new Upper Class seats on A350-1000s. The airline has just taken delivery of their first A350, and they will start service with the plane soon.
Virgin Atlantic’s new Upper Class
Virgin Atlantic has said all along that their priority is to deploy more A350s on the New York route, so rather than introducing the plane to a bunch of destinations, it seems New York is their focus.
That’s why it’s interesting to note that at this point Virgin Atlantic has scheduled up to 4x daily A350-1000 flights between London and New York:
- As of September 10, 2019, one daily frequency will be operated by the A350
- As of September 24, 2019, two daily frequencies will be operated by the A350
- As of November 5, 2019, three daily frequencies will be operated by the A350
- As of December 9, 2019, four daily frequencies will be operated by A350
Virgin Atlantic A350-1000
You’ll of course want to check the exact schedule for the date you’re traveling, because this remains subject to change, and there are also varying schedules day-to-day.
That’s a pretty impressive deployment speed for their flights to New York.
Virgin Atlantic typically operates 6x daily flights between London and New York, so I’ll be curious to see if they go all-A350 on the route by early next year. The airline has a total of 12 A350s on order, so it could be that nearly half of those are deployed on their New York route.
Virgin Atlantic’s new Upper Class
I also wonder if they use this opportunity to expand capacity to JFK, or if we could see them go down to 5x daily flights. Currently they use a combination of A330s, A340s, and 787s on the New York route, and all of those are lower capacity than the A350. The A350 can seat up to 335 passengers, while the other planes on the route seat 264-308 passengers.
As before, Virgin Atlantic has a good amount of award availability on their A350s, so it’s nice to see that they’re not blocking availability on these flights.
Tiffany and I are already booked to fly Virgin Atlantic’s A350 Upper Class from London to New York in October, and I can’t wait to experience it.
Anyone else booked to fly Virgin Atlantic’s new Upper Class?
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