Virgin Atlantic today announced plans to increase services on some key routes in response to an increasing demand for air travel. Steve Ridgway, Chief Executive of the airline said:
“Our load factors, particularly on leisure routes have been improving for some while now and we feel the time is right for a number of incremental increases. We will be increasing services to leisure destinations Las Vegas and Antigua and also to the developing markets of Shanghai and Lagos. I`m also pleased that we are reintroducing two more services per week between Heathrow to Newark.
“After 11 September we moved quickly and decisively to realign our business to the new demands of the market place and we are beginning to reap the rewards of that action.”

NORTH AMERICA
From 30 July until 27 August 2002 Virgin Atlantic will add an additional Tuesday service from Gatwick to Las Vegas making a total of 3 services per week to this key leisure city.

From 4 June 2002 a Tuesday service will resume from Heathrow to Newark and from 24 July on Wednesdays until early September. This means that VAA will operate a total of 28 flights per week to New York during this period.

ASIA
Virgin Atlantic will increase its services to Shanghai by adding an additional Tuesday service to compliment its existing thrice weekly service from 2 July to 22 October 2002. The extra capacity will service the increased demand on this route to one of China`s most popular destinations for both business and leisure travellers.

AFRICA
The African routes that Virgin Atlantic serves are becoming increasingly popular and to better service these the airline is adding a Tuesday service to Lagos from 19 March 2002 which will help to match demand on this route. Consequently there will be five VAA flights between the Uk and Nigeria each week.
CARIBBEAN
From 19 April 2002 Virgin Atlantic`s Friday Bridgetown service will be revised to introduce a second Antigua frequency on a Friday enabling passengers to access this most beautiful of islands as easily and frequently as possible. Passengers will fly to Barbados where the aircraft will spend an hour on the ground before completing the journey to Antigua.
Steve Ridgway said:

” We need to maintain our focus on controlling our costs and growing our revenues in all cabins in the months ahead. This revised flying schedule gives us an overall capacity increase of over 5% and that demonstrates that we can look to the future with increasing optimism.”

——-