Virgin Atlantic launches new Manchester to India flights
Virgin Atlantic will launch two new routes to India from its base at Manchester Airport in the coming months.
The carrier will fly three times a week to Mumbai from December and begin twice weekly flights to Delhi in January.
It already flies the the two cities from its base at Heathrow Airport.
Juha Jarvinen, chief commercial officer at Virgin Atlantic, commented: “We’re delighted to launch new flying from our home in the north in Manchester.
“India boasts the largest foreign-born population in the UK and we’re anticipating that post Covid-19, the demand to travel home to visit loved ones will increase.”
There are over 500,000 Indians living across the north of England.
The routes are just the latest new trips that the Sir Richard Branson-founded airline has launched since restarting flights in July.
With its bread-and-butter transatlantic schedule all but defunct due to existing travel restrictions, Virgin has had to look further afield in order to keep flying.
Speaking to tourism body ABTA’s virtual conference yesterday, chief exec Shai Weiss warned that airlines would go bust in the coming months.
“At some point if borders do not open up, there’s only a certain amount of time that you can survive,” Weiss said.