Virgin upgrades product for India

Keeping in the mind customer preferences on the India-London route, Virgin Atlantic is tweaking its offerings, including F&B, to ensure its Indian clients are happy. The airline will also soon go double daily between Heathrow and Delhi.

Hazel Jain

Corneel Koster, Executive Vice President – Customer, Virgin Atlantic Airways, was in Mumbai recently along with Sir Richard Branson to announce the new India- London route. He said, “We are so proud to be back in Mumbai. At the same time, this is a special year for us because we are also going to go double daily between Heathrow and Delhi from March 2020. So effectively, we are really going to triple our flying into this fantastic market. Year 2020 is also our 20th year of being in India.”

We have good timings both ways for Mumbai and strong load factors. This market has been growing about 25%

Speaking about its offerings on the route, he shares that the airline has been studying the market and its preferences. “We study our markets all the time and we try and offer the best journey to all customers. On this route, we have a great mix of British and Indian hospitality. We are very proud of our Indian cabin crew and are at this moment recruiting 40 more crew members to have a good number of Indian crew on our flights. We have an Indian food critic as part of our F&B team and we are evolving our food all the time. We now have paneer makhni and biryani on-board, which is of amazing quality and we have received re- ally good feedback from our customers. And, of course, we offer Bollywood movies,” he adds.

The secret, Koster says, is in really listening to the customer. “We had about 5,300 Indian customers responding to our survey this year. We analysed each and every one and took their inputs. So, we now have better arrival snacks with naan, dal and murgh. We have also added midnight snacks,” he says.

Speaking about the India market, Koster shares, “We have good timings both ways for Mumbai and have seen really strong load factors. This market has been growing about 25 per cent over the last five years. The capacity is, of course, completely different from what it was a couple of years ago. So, we see really good opportunities in the Mumbai market. We offer very good connectivity upon arrival both ways with our own flights, but also with our partner, Delta. We have great connectivity to the US specially New York and Boston, which are big markets for Mumbai and India.”

The airline has also recently taken delivery of four A350s, but it flies them between New York and London at the moment. “To India, we fly our Dreamliner 787-9, which is a fantastic product. We have a couple of A330s to Delhi as well. So, we have got a really modern fleet. Our 787 is fantastic in a three-cabin layout – Upper, Premium and Economy – and then we have Economy Delight with extra legroom in the Economy cabin. It also has a good sustainable footprint with reduced CO2, noise and fuel burn,” Koster adds.