Virgin Atlantic new flying programme for summer 2020 will give cargo customers more capacity to India, Africa and the United States.

In a statement, the British airline said new schedule will see a second daily Boeing 787 service to Delhi Indira Gandhi Airport, from March 29 departing from Heathrow in the morning and complementing the airline’s current evening departure.

With the additional daily flight to Delhi, Virgin Atlantic said it offers more choices to its cargo customers to support its thriving import and export markets. Earlier, the airline already announced a daily Mumbai service which commenced last month.

Virgin Atlantic’s Boeing 787-9 services offer up to 26 tonnes of cargo capacity on every flight, which from India includes high volumes of perishables, pharmaceuticals and courier shipments.

Last year alone, Virgin Atlantic said India shipped US$323.1 billion worth of products around the globe in 2018, up 9.2% year-on-year, with the US and UK markets accounting for US$51.6 billion and US$9.8 billion of its exports respectively. 

It said that its transatlantic customers – including those with high volumes of e-commerce traffic – will also gain from the launch of an additional weekly service to San Francisco, departing every Friday, providing a choice of twice-daily flights between Heathrow and the Golden Gate City.

Cargo customers will also benefit from Johannesburg becoming the first non-US route to debut Virgin Atlantic’s brand new A350 aircraft, with a daily service from March 2020.

The aircraft is already significantly boosting cargo capacity on its current routing between London and New York, with its next services earmarked for Los Angeles, followed by San Francisco and Lagos.

“These new routes and frequencies for summer 2020 are great news for our cargo customers. India, South Africa and Nigeria are very important and growing routes for our cargo business, so our commitment to offer more capacity connecting customers in these countries to their prime UK and US markets will help to open up opportunities for more import and export growth,” Dominic Kennedy, managing director of Virgin Atlantic Cargo said.

By August, Virgin Atlantic’s A350 aircraft will fly to five destinations across its network and all its flights to Africa will be on the new aircraft.