Mumbai: Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic is all set to operate again on the Mumbai-London route, nearly after three years after the airline announced withdrawal of flights from Mumbai facing thinning profit margins in a recession hit environment.
The flights that are scheduled to start from October 29 this year will be done on the A330-300 with Upper Class Dreamsuite, a new product line offering from Virgin, the airline said in a statement on Thursday.
The announcement of launch of Virgin's flight comes at a time when some of the bigger international carriers like Qantas and American Airlines have withdrawn flights from the Indian market. Also domestic carriers like Kingfisher have been forced to dump international flights to London both from Delhi and Mumbai due to a financial crisis thereby sucking capacity from the market.
Virgin is not only connecting Mumbai to London but its daily flights will also offer easy connectivity from London Heathrow to US markets of New York, Boston, Chicago and Washington, the airline said. However the Chicago service will be a seasonal service starting only in 2013. The stop over time for US connecting flights will have no more than couple of hours' wait, the airline said.
Virgin flights from New Delhi to London and New York have seen a growth of 20% in 2011 and overall since Virgin stopped operating from Mumbai, over a million passengers have flown this market, the airline said justifying the start of flights again.
"India's phenomenal growth continues to drive travel to the UK and the USA and we know our passengers are going to love the connections the new flights offers," said Sir Richard Branson, president Virgin Atlantic Airways.
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