Virgin America Will Begin Flying to Toronto and Orlando This Summer

March 18, 2010 at 8:03 AM | by JetSetCD | Comments (8)

Who wants to hear some awesome news this morning? Alright, then! Virgin America, the sexy domestic carrier that's all about free in-flight wifi, mood lightning and actual good food onboard, just announced the new routes that they'll be flying with six new aircraft this year. This summer, Virgin America will begin flying to Toronto and Orlando direct from LAX and SFO. They are Virgin "America," after all, and not "Virgin USA," so it's time for a little expanded continent love. Now let's talk timeline...

The first new move will happen when Virgin America goes over the border to land at Toronto-Pearson (YYZ) with daily flights from LAX and SFO as early as June! We gave Toronto a 60% chance of being their new spot in our betting pool, but imagine Vancouver would beat it to being their first Canadian destination. Guess not! Virgin America is now daydreaming about shopping at Eaton Centre and walking on the glass floor at the top of the CN Tower, apparently.

Also arriving this summer is a destination we didn't see coming, because Virgin already flies to Fort Lauderdale. They'll be kicking in to Orlando-MCO on August 19 and tickets are already on sale at virginamerica.com—perhaps to shuttle in west coasters for a taste of the opening season of Universal Studios' new Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park? Perhaps! But then everyone just likes to go to Florida, so the move makes sense.

To make room for all of this expansion, and the promise of yet another three big new destination announcements this year, the airline will end their service from Orange Country's John Wayne airport to San Francisco on May 26. It makes sense, with focus turning to their presence at LAX, so we're not distraught over the move.

Now here's the kicker: Virgin America plans to announce three more destinations still for 2010, and although they are keeping mum on those, we always hold out hope for Chicago to come through. On the other hand, as VX's long-haul service expands, we aren't sure that they'd want to make a jump to the Midwest when they could do a JFK-Vancouver or expand service from Seattle instead. So many options!

Rest assured that we'll keep watching Virgin America with an eager eye, but we want to know: did you expect them to announce Toronto and Orlando? Are you excited for the new routes?

Related Stories:
· Place Your Bets for Virgin America's Next Destination [Jaunted]
· Virgin America's 'Fly Girls' TV Show Debuts on March 24 [Jaunted]
· Virgin America news [Jaunted]

[Photo: VA plane via VA, Toronto skyline via FineArtAmerica]

Comments (8)

Return to » Virgin America Will Begin Flying to Toronto and Orlando This Summer

Doesn't shock me, but I wasn't expecting it this early. 3 more this year. Let the speculation begin!

So now the next place just has to be Vancouver, right?

I am very excited about all this news! Orlando is awesome, wasn't expecting that. I will definitely be doing that one some day. I was hoping for Vancouver over Toronto, but it does sound like that Vancouver will likely be one of the 3 other new destinations this year (since Chicago is not going to happen until at least 2011 now). Go Virgin America!!

Don't get me wrong I love this blog, but sometimes I feel like this blog is paid for and run by Virgin America. Other VA news was that they're cutting Orange County service, and that passengers waited for more than six hours on the tarmac. I realize that this happens to other airlines too, but when it happens, the editors tend to nit-pick and say "Boo United SUCKS!" Seriously, I love this blog, and I've enjoy VA the few times I've used it, but don't treat VA like some angel that's somehow infallible. Now a non-rant comment: Can VA legally fly to Toronto under the name Virgin America? I thought that the reason it was called V Australia rather than Virgin Australia was that no airline but Virgin Atlantic fly internationally and contain the name "Virgin" - Other examples include Polynesian Blue and Pacific Blue.

Thanks for the comments, Max. Let me reply: Jaunted is not paid for or connected to any airline or any other company. Our only parent is the CondeNet empire, so we have no reason to be biased. We mentioned the dropping of the Orange County service in the news above, but it's not as big of news as the new routes. Also, any news from Virgin America is big news, since they are still a small airline jostling for position with the legacy carriers. Legacy carriers don't really have much great news, but today for instance, there was also this story on how legacy carriers are the ones to adopt electronic boarding passes.

Re: the VX tarmac delay: We like to keep things original on Jaunted and everyone covered that news from top to bottom, so instead we turned it into a Top 5 Ways to Survive a Tarmac Delay, specifically noting that "flightmare." Thing is, that happens every so often and no one realizes it, it's just that this time it was a VX flight liveblogged by that guy onboard.

We address this favoritism issue every time we speak to someone in the top brass at any company. When was the last time United gave us, or any blog, a call?

Not sure about the Virgin naming issues on international routes; will see what we can find.

I must have missed the bad news about Virgin America in those stories. I also didn't realize that the Virgin America was calling you rather than you calling them instead of United, AA, etc. That makes me like Virgin America more, actually.

RE the international routes - I believe it stems from Singapore Airlines' partial ownership of Virgin Atlantic somehow. I can't find too much about it beyond Wikipedia's entry on V Australia though... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_Australia#Naming_competition).

It's disappointing not hearing a SFO-ORD announcement today, but I'll keep my fingers crossed it's one of the remaining 3 routes planned for this year.

That's pretty cool, now you can head to Orlando and go into space with Virgin. Nice one Branson, he certainly knows how to run things properly. Virgin has to be one of the greatest transatlantic carriers, the service is second to none.

Jaunted

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