Our new second daily flight to Johannesburg will be operated by Boeing 787-9 offering our latest cabin interiors and inflight entertainment, as well as Wi-Fi on every flight.

Our first flight will depart on 28 October 2018. With two flights per day to South Africa’s biggest city, we expect to carry over 300,000 customers annually – helping to support tourism and trade between the two nations.

The additional daily flight will depart London Heathrow at 16:45 and land into Johannesburg at 05:40 local time. The service will be the first Heathrow flight to land each morning making it perfect for business travellers or those with onward connections to the rest of Africa. The return flight will leave Johannesburg at 22:20 landing back into Heathrow at 07:30. The route has been timed to enable customers to easily connect onto flights with us and Delta to over 200 US destinations, including Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Shai Weiss, Chief Commercial Officer at Virgin Atlantic, commented:

“Virgin Atlantic has been proud to serve South Africa for over 20 years. Johannesburg is one of the most popular destinations on our network so we’re delighted to add a second daily service to create even more travel opportunities for our customers.

From Winter 2018 we will operate two flights per day to Johannesburg to make it even easier for customers to travel for business and leisure between the UK and South Africa – as well as creating additional cargo capacity for the route. “

Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said:

“We’re delighted to see Virgin Atlantic add another daily service to Johannesburg from Heathrow – strengthening Britain’s connections with one of Africa’s most important markets. The new Virgin Atlantic flight will boost choice for our passengers and open up new opportunities for Britain’s exporters to trade with South Africa.”

All customers travelling to and from South Africa will enjoy our award winning service, and a choice of booking into the Upper Class, Premium or Economy cabins. Earlier this month we announced that it would introduce three new ticket types from Spring 2018 – Economy Light, Economy Classic and Economy Delight. The new South African flights will offer 36 Economy Delight seats on each service – with priority check-in and boarding, free seat selection and 34inch extra legroom seats which are expected to prove particularly popular on overnight flights.

Our London Heathrow to Johannesburg flight will operate on the following schedule: