(TAN): Virgin Atlantic has announced its plan to restart passenger flying, with services from London Heathrow to Orlando, Hong Kong, Shanghai, New York JFK and Los Angeles set to resume from 20th and 21st July 2020.
As countries around the world start to relax travel restrictions, Virgin Atlantic will resume some routes on 20th July, while steadily increasing passenger flying throughout the second half of 2020, with a further, gradual recovery through 2021 in line with customer demand.
Juha Jarvinen, Chief Commercial Officer, Virgin Atlantic commented: “As the Covid-19 crisis stabilises and demand slowly returns, we are looking forward to welcoming our customers back onboard and flying them safely to their favourite destinations. To ensure the health and safety of our customers and our people, we’re introducing new measures at every point in the journey to offer peace of mind when taking to the skies with us.”
“Our planned first flights will be to Orlando and Hong Kong on the 20th July, however, we are monitoring external conditions extremely closely, in particular the travel restrictions many countries have in place including the 14 day quarantine policy for travellers entering the UK.”
“We know that as the Covid-19 crisis subsides, air travel will be a vital enabler of the UK’s economic recovery. Therefore, we are calling for a multi-layered approach of carefully targeted public health and screening measures, which will allow for a successful and safe restart of international air travel for passengers and businesses. We are planning to announce more destination restart dates in the next two weeks for the month of August,”Jarvinen added.
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To ensure the health and safety of customers, Virgin Atlantic is implementing enhanced and thorough cleaning practices at check in, boarding gates and onboard including the use of electrostatic spraying of high-grade disinfectant onboard in all cabins and lavatories, ensuring no surface is left untouched. Safe distancing will also be adhered to wherever possible, particularly at check-in and boarding and where not possible, masks will be required.
The airline will provide a personal Health Pack for the wellbeing and comfort of all customers, which will contain medical grade face masks as a requirement to be worn onboard, surface wipes and hand gel. In the short term, it will also be offering a simplified hot food service onboard to minimise contact, enclosed from preparation in a Covid-safe, monitored environment directly to the customers’ seats.
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Corneel Koster, Chief Customer Officer, Virgin Atlantic commented: “Our teams have been working tirelessly to ensure that the health and safety of our airport and onboard experience offers peace of mind to our customers when travelling with us. Our medical experts are working closely with all relevant U.K. and international health and aviation authorities to ensure we adhere to, and on many occasions exceed the guidance they are offering, whilst continuously reviewing and updating the measures we have in place to keep our customers and teams safe.”
