Virgin Atlantic Aims To Be Savior Of Passengers During British Airways Strike

December 16, 2009 at 9:29 AM | by JetSetCD | Comments (2)

If you're holding tickets to fly on British Airways anytime between December 22 and January 2, then we hope that you've already heard that the airline's employees are striking for those two weeks, virtually incapacitating the world's third largest airline. Although BA has admitted that flights during the first week will be cancelled, they'll attempt to run a skeleton operation for the second week, but we don't see how that's possible. Thus, you've got to scramble to rebook now.

We've already offered Five Tips for Rebooking Your Cancelled BA Flight from a Jaunted writer who just went through the stress of actually changing a multi-segment itinerary. But now, more help comes in the form of Virgin Atlantic swooping in with larger planes to help scoop up the passengers left stranded by British Airways.

The full deal, after the jump.

Virgin Atlantic will use an Airbus A340-600 rather than the smaller Airbus A340-300 on routes to London from New York (Newark), Boston, Washington and Delhi, freeing up an extra 68 seats per flight, or around 1600 total during the strike period. These new spots will open up for sale today, so get to booking quickly before you're stuck with some other crazy route like Air India to Frankfurt and then easyJet to London.

Now it's no secret how much Virgin's Richard Branson hates British Airways (example here), but any grinning at their misfortune is put off by the plight of a million or so impacted travelers just trying to get where they're going for the holidays. Obviously there is still the hope that, after experiencing a Virgin Atlantic flight, these would-be BA customers will switch allegiance.

[Photo: wicho]

Comments (2)

Return to » Virgin Atlantic Aims To Be Savior Of Passengers During British Airways Strike

Nice unbiased comments from a Virgin sponsored site. No mention of the fact that Virgin are using larger aircraft to merely cash in on a bad situation with ticket prices vastly inflated over normal. As usual the bearded wonder is taking a leaf out of Ryanairs book and maximising profits at the expense of others. Shame on you Virgin - why not just sell the tickets to BA ticket holders at the same price as the tickets they already hold?? That way you really would be saving their Christmas not just adding to the misery.

We're not sponsored by Virgin; writers for Jaunted (such as myself) have nothing to do with the advertisers. This was a hot press release that directly tied in with the topic of the day: the BA strike. Ryanair, easyJet and plenty others have inflated ticket prices, which is what happens when you book last minute on already packed holiday flights.

Jaunted

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