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Virgin Atlantic announces restart to 17 destinations

Virgin Atlantic plans to restart flights to Miami, San Francisco, Barbados, Tel Aviv and 13 other destinations from August.

However, Virgin Atlantic said the resumption of services would depend on travel restrictions being lifted around the world.

Restrictions on travel remain in place in most destinations, although restrictions in much of the EU have been lifted in the past week.

UK quarantine measures are expected to be relaxed from July 4 to some EU destinations, but Virgin Atlantic flies solely beyond Europe, primarily to North America and the Caribbean.

The carrier had already announced it would restart flights from Heathrow on July 20.

Virgin Atlantic chief commercial officer Juha Jarvinen said: “As countries around the world begin to relax travel restrictions, we look forward to welcoming customers back onboard and flying them safely to many destinations across our network.

“From July 20 we are planning to resume some services and then from August 1 we will resume flying to 17 additional destinations including Tel Aviv, Miami, Lagos and San Francisco.”

“We are monitoring external conditions closely, in particular the travel restrictions many countries have in place including the 14-day quarantine policy for travellers entering the UK.”

The carrier called again for the UK government to review its quarantine measures and “look at a multi-layered approach of carefully targeted public health and screening measures, including air bridges”.

Virgin Atlantic will resume services from Heathrow to Hong Kong on July 20, and to New York JFK and Los Angeles on July 21.

Flights to Barbados will resume on August 1, to San Francisco and Shanghai on August 4 and to Tel Aviv on August 9.

Miami services will restart on August 18, Lagos on August 23 and Orlando on August 24, when flights from Manchester to Orlando should also resume. However, these flights are subject to approval by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Heathrow-Atlanta flights are set to restart on August 25.

September should see the resumption of services to Washington, Seattle, Las Vegas, Mumbai, Delhi and Johannesburg, and October the restart of flights to Montego Bay, Antigua, Grenada and Tobago.

Manchester to Barbados services should also start in October.

All flights will operate from Heathrow Terminal 2 until further notice, due to the consolidation of facilities at Heathrow.

Virgin Atlantic said it would return to Terminal 3 when the terminal reopens.

The carrier added: “We will continue to monitor our network and expect more flights from London Heathrow and Manchester to resume in September and October 2020.

“Seasonal services from Glasgow and Belfast to Orlando will resume for selected dates in summer 2021.”

Virgin Atlantic announced the closure of its base at Gatwick in May and the loss of more than 3,000 jobs.

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