Last Wednesday, November 2, Virgin Atlantic began its non-stop service between London/Heathrow (LHR) and Tampa (TPA). With this new route, the British airline will offer three destinations in the state of Florida.
Flight VS 129, operated in an Airbus A330neo registered with the registration number G-VJAZ and christened «Billie Holiday», took off from Heathrow Airport (LHR) at 08:31 local time and landed at Tampa International Airport (TPA) at 14:00, after nine hours and 30 minutes.
According to data compiled by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), 234,071 passengers flew between London and Tampa. Currently, the British capital is TPA’s main long-haul market.
«Not only does this create another Tampa-UK option for our leisure travelers, but there is a great advantage for our thriving business community to now have convenient access from TPA to the world’s leading business airport,» said Joe Lopano, CEO of Tampa International Airport.
«We expect this to be a popular route during what we know will be a busy winter travel season,» Lopano added.
Virgin Atlantic is the fourth European and second British airline to offer nonstop operations from Tampa (TPA) and the only carrier to fly from London/Heathrow (LHR). Currently TPA’s long-haul operators are British Airways operating from London/Gatwick (LGW), Lufthansa from Frankfurt (FRA) and Edelweiss from Zurich (ZRH).
Flight Itinerary
- London/Heathrow – Tampa Flight VS 129 LHR 13:25 – TPA 18:35 Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.
- Tampa – London/Heathrow Flight VS 130 TPA 20:50 – LHR 10:15+1 Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.
The route will be operated on Airbus A330-900neo aircraft with a capacity of 262 seats in three classes (32 Upper Class/46 Premium Economy/184 Economy). With this new service, the airline expects to offer up to 190,000 seats per year.
Service details
- On November 9 there will be a special flight on the Airbus A350-1000 with a capacity of 335 passengers.
- From November 15 the route increases to five times a week.
- From November 27 the operation will ramp-up to daily flights.
«We are delighted to continue our expansion in the U.S. with this new daily service to Tampa which offers even more options for customers on both sides of the Atlantic to connect between the U.S. and the U.K.,» said Juha Järvinen, Virgin Atlantic’s chief commercial officer.
According to data obtained by Aviacionline through Cirium, Virgin Atlantic will have 17,312 weekly seats on offer between the UK and the state of Florida in December, comprising all non-stop services to Miami (MIA), Orlando (MCO) and Tampa (TPA).
See also: Virgin Atlantic began the first commercial operations of its Airbus A330neo
