Virgin Atlantic has announced it will increase capacity to New York-JFK (JFK) and Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) for the summer of 2024.
The carrier has said that it would be increasing the number of flights from its main hub at London-Heathrow (LHR) to New York’s John F Kennedy Airport (JFK) to seven return flights daily. Along with its codeshare partner (and major shareholder) Delta Air Lines, the partners will offer a total of ten trips between the two gateways.
This quantity of flights represents an 11% increase over that offered in summer 2023.
In a further boost to its operations to the US East Coast, Virgin Atlantic will also add a second daily service to Boston. With an additional daily service also being offered by Delta, the city will be served with three flights a day from the partners.
The new flights will be served by Virgin Atlantic’s newest aircraft types, namely the A330-900neo and A350-1000. The A330s (of which the carrier currently has 14 in service) seat a total of 262 passengers while the 10 A350s flown by the airline each seat 335 passengers, both in a three-class configuration.
The addition of these new additional services results in an increase in the number of Upper Class and Premium Economy seats by 23% over the summer of 2023.
“We’re excited to announce additional flying to our heartland in the USA for summer 2024,” said Juha Jarvinen, Chief Commercial Officer at Virgin Atlantic. “By utilizing our brand new A350 and A330 aircraft, our passengers can travel in style with Virgin Atlantic, as we commit to operating the routes that our customers love to fly.”
“With Boston and New York, JFK being key business and leisure travel routes, customers can rely on Virgin Atlantic to connect them to these popular destinations as we offer more opportunities to travel with our expanded offering,” he added.
The increase in frequencies to the East Coast cities has been facilitated by a planned redeployment of the Virgin Atlantic fleet for the summer of 2024. The airline is to stop utilizing the A350-1000 on its services from London to Miami (MIA) and replace it with its fleet of 17 Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners.
The dropping of direct flights between London and Austin was announced in October 2023, and the delay to the start of services serving Sao Paulo announced in November 2023 means that there is additional capacity in the airlines’ summer 2024 flying program for the new flights to commence.
Alongside the additional services to New York and Boston, Virgin Atlantic has also recently announced it would increase its Miami service from 11 flights per week to a twice-daily year-round route.
Each of these new services will complement the carrier’s existing route network eastwards from London-Heathrow, allowing connections from the US points to other cities served by the airline including Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Johannesburg, and Shanghai.
Having suffered greatly during the pandemic, these latest route announcements indicate that the airline is back on course and remains committed to growth. The carrier recently announced it is forecasting a profitable trading position in 2024.
