Virgin to add new Jamaica flight
Virgin Atlantic is to expand its services to Jamaica later this year with the launch of flights between London Gatwick and Kingston.
Using Virgin’s 451-seat Boeing 747-400 aircraft, the new twice-weekly service will start on October 30 and will run alongside Virgin’s twice-weekly services between Gatwick and Montego Bay.
The new services will double Virgin’s capacity between London and Jamaica to 190,000 seats a year.
The move comes after a signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Air Jamaica and Virgin and follows Air Jamaica’s decision to stop flying between the UKand Jamaica in order to concentrate on its core routes.
Virgin is also announcing a new codeshare agreement with Air Jamaica, in which the airline will place its code on Virgin flights operating to and from Kingston, as well as Montego Bay.
In turn,Virgin will add its VS code to internal, connecting Air Jamaica flights between Montego Bay and Kingston.
Virgin CEO Steve Ridgway said: “We look forward to working more closely with Air Jamaica to develop the routes between London and Jamaica.
“We intend to offer a comprehensive network of connections between our three UK airports – Gatwick, Heathrow and Manchester – and Jamaica via our US and Caribbean gateways, and in future we will look to build up connecting traffic via Jamaica to other points in the Caribbean region.
“We also intend to increase the frequency to Montego Bay as soon as possible, as we take delivery of new aircraft including the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner which we recently ordered.”
Tickets for the new flights go on sale this week.
By Bev Fearis
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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