News & offers: Middle East business class £448, Virgins’s new aircraft & Heathrow to divert M25 & rivers

Business class to the Middle East from £448 – ends TODAY!

Despite only being a 5-hour flight, flights to Tel Aviv can be pretty expensive in business class – usually over the £1000 mark from the UK. Tel Aviv appears to be one of the current hotspots for travel with both Roving Reporter and Paul visiting recently. I have even booked to go next year on Virgin’s new service to Tel Aviv as well.

Today’s offers are all with Swiss – they don’t have the best business class seats but they are certainly good enough for these short flights. The flights are on Swiss’ A330 aircraft mainly and depart from Paris Charles de Gaulle.

The fares are Paris to:

• Muscat £937
• Tel Aviv £446
• Dubai £938

The rules of the fare are:

• Book by: TODAY – 19 June 2019
• Travel: by 31 May 2020
• Minimum stay: 3 nights or a Saturday night
• Maximum stay: 3 months
• Transfers: Unlimited
• Stopovers: 1 in each direction for €100
• Refundable: No
• Changeable: No

You can book direct with Swiss here or find the cheapest online travel agent price with Skyscanner.

Virgin orders 14 new aircraft

Virgin Atlantic has become the first UK airline to announce a firm order for 14 Airbus A330-900neos, with an additional six as options, reaffirming its commitment to flying the cleanest, greenest fleet in the sky.

The new planes are designed to be 13% more fuel and carbon efficient than the A330-300 they replace.  The order is a crucial step in Virgin Atlantic’s fleet transformation programme which will see 100% of the airline’s planes replaced over a ten year period, creating one of the youngest fleets in the skies with an average age of just 5.3 years.   Of the firm order, eight will be purchased and six leased.  Virgin Atlantic are currently deliberately increasing the proportion of owned aircraft in its fleet.

The new aircraft will offer all Virgin Atlantic cabins; Upper Class, Premium and its three tiers of Economy; Delight, Classic and Light. The aircraft will operate on both business and leisure routes worldwide potentially from all their bases at London Heathrow, London Gatwick and Manchester Airports. Unfortunately Virgin have not confirmed what seats will be in Upper Class. You would hope that it will be a version of the new A350 Upper Class Suite but given the slightly narrower body of the A330neo aircraft it remains to be seen if this is feasible.

In addition to announcing new aircraft today, Virgin Atlantic will receive its first Airbus A350-1000 this summer, which includes a custom made Upper Class cabin, featuring a brand new suite and social space.

Heathrow reveals grand plan for expansion

Heathrow Airport yesterday revealed its Masterplan for the airport’s future. It included constructing a third runway by 2026 with the full expansion complete by 2050. The plan is ambitious if nothing else with aims to move rivers and roads alongside diverting the M25 through a tunnel under the new runway! The proposals are now open to public consultation until 13 September.

The new terminals and access roads would not be fully complete until 24 years after the third runway was completing if it went according to plan. However, just building a new runway would ease many of Heathrow’s current issues. Heathrow operates at 96% capacity on a daily basis meaning that if something goes wrong on a big scale such as fog or weather there is little chance to catch up. This leads to automatic cancellations particularly BA as this is onlt hope of getting back onto the schedule for other flights.