Virgin Atlantic Launching Toronto Flights As Of March 2025
Virgin Atlantic has simply introduced its latest lengthy haul flight, and it’s not essentially the subsequent route I might have anticipated from the airline…
Virgin Atlantic provides London to Toronto flight
As of March 30, 2025, Virgin Atlantic will launch a brand new every day flight between London Heathrow (LHR) and Toronto Pearson (YYZ). The airline states it should use a mixture of plane on the three,556-mile route, together with the Airbus A330-900neo. The brand new route is predicted to be bookable as of June 19, 2024, at which level the schedule will probably be revealed.
This would be the first time in additional than a decade that Virgin Atlantic flies to Canada — the airline final flew to Vancouver (YVR) by means of 2014. The Toronto service is technically a route resumption, as Virgin Atlantic final operated this route in 2001, however it was reduce after a short while because of 9/11.
The motivation of the route is described as connecting two international monetary hubs, and offering optimum connectivity to Virgin Atlantic’s India community, together with flights to Delhi (DEL), Mumbai (BOM), and newly launched service to Bengaluru (BLR).
On prime of that, Virgin Atlantic is launching an expanded codeshare partnership with WestJet as of October 2024. This can enable Canadian clients to journey all through the area, together with flights from Ottawa and Winnipeg. Frequent flyer reciprocity can also be anticipated in 2025 (which I’m wanting ahead to — hopefully it’s doable to redeem Flying Membership factors on WestJet).
This route appears logical sufficient, I suppose?
For a London-based airline, flying to Toronto is sensible. Nonetheless, Virgin Atlantic on the whole is type of in a difficult spot on the subject of route enlargement:
- The airline doesn’t have many development aspirations, on condition that it solely has lengthy haul plane, and doesn’t have many extra planes on order
- Virgin Atlantic is 49% owned by Delta, so the provider’s largest focus is on the transatlantic three way partnership with Delta and Air France-KLM
- Outdoors of the North Atlantic and India, Virgin Atlantic type of struggles with technique; the airline was going to fly to Sao Paulo, however backtracked, and the airline additionally hasn’t accomplished a lot to develop to North Asia or Southeast Asia
I can see how there’s a good bit of demand between Toronto and London, and likewise between Toronto and India, so I assume this route will do advantageous. Nonetheless, there’s little doubt loads of competitors right here, as Air Canada dominates Toronto, and British Airways additionally has a major presence there.
Whereas a partnership with WestJet helps as properly, a majority of WestJet’s community in Toronto is leisure flying to heat locations, which doesn’t actually do a lot for this route.
So I’m curious to see how this evolves. Virgin Atlantic does have a historical past of launching flights after which canceling them sooner relatively than later, so we’ll see if the service to Canada succeeds.
Backside line
As of the spring of 2025, Virgin Atlantic will launch a brand new every day flight between London and Toronto. This marks Virgin Atlantic’s return to Canada for the primary time in over a decade. I wouldn’t have essentially assumed that Toronto could be Virgin Atlantic’s subsequent lengthy haul vacation spot, however I suppose between the native site visitors plus India connections, this route ought to carry out advantageous.
What do you make of Virgin Atlantic launching Toronto flights?