Virgin Atlantic has plans to relaunch its Johannesburg-London Heathrow route on September 15. The route is one of 17 that the airline aims to relaunch as soon as travel restrictions are eased.
“We want to show our commitment to return to South Africa and believe that the signs for a September reopening of borders are very promising,” says Virgin Atlantic’s head of Middle East, Africa and India, Liezl Gericke.
The relaunch of the Johannesburg route is tied to acquiring the relevant approvals for the flights, she says. Liesl says the airline will continue to lobby government to reopen borders.
“Our intention is to gradually reintroduce flights. We plan to initially introduce passenger services three times a week with the same overnight schedule that we operated prior to lockdown. We then want to slowly ramp this back up to a daily schedule, subject to demand. We will be operating a brand new A350-1000 aircraft on the route,” Liezl says.
At the beginning of the year Virgin Atlantic announced its intention to launch a new seasonal Cape Town-London route. Liezl says the airline still has every intention of launching Cape Town before the end of the year, should it receive the relevant permission.
The airline will operate temporarily from Terminal 2 at Heathrow due to the airport’s current terminal consolidation. It will return to Terminal 3 when demand at Heathrow grows, enabling it to reopen.
Virgin Atlantic is also implementing additional safety measures at check-in, boarding gates and on board. Customers will receive a personal health pack containing medical-grade face masks (which are required to be worn on board), surface wipes and hand gel.
To minimise contact in the short term, a simplified hot food service will be offered in Economy and Premium Economy where meals that have been prepared and enclosed in a COVID-19 safe, monitored environment will be delivered directly to customers’ seats. Upper Class customers will continue to receive a choice of hot meals and desserts, which will be delivered to their seat on a tray.
