Virgin to allow in flight mobile phone use as part of £50m cabin makeover
16.10.11
Virgin Atlantic is upgrading the cabins of its Gatwick and Manchester fleets with a £50+ million refurbishment targeting leisure passengers. From May next year, passengers travelling to destinations including Orlando, the Caribbean and Las Vegas on the retro-fitted Boeing 747-400s will enjoy leather seats, touch-screen inflight entertainment technology and a cutting-edge phone system will also allow the use of mobiles for voice, text and email services.
Beginning next May, Virgin will install new seats in premium economy and economy and a new entertainment system offering 300 hours of content, including video-on-demand for the first time and an intuitive touch screen system. By October, when the upgrade is completed, premium economy passengers flying out of Gatwick and Manchester to destinations including the Caribbean islands and Las Vegas will have leather ergonomic seats with an increased pitch of 38-inches, lumbar support, a dual position footrest and an adjustable headrest with wings. They will also be able to make telephone calls and send messages from their own mobiles for the first time.
This will be the first major refurbishment of the 10-year-old 747s which operate Virgin's holiday routes from Gatwick and Manchester. It will put Gatwick’s planes on par with that operating out of Heathrow. It is the first major step in a £100 million product investment announced by Virgin. Edmond Rose, the airline's director of commercial and revenue planning, said: ‘Over a quarter of Virgin Atlantic’s revenue comes on leisure routes and bookings for this winter are growing faster than last year. We fly three quarters of a million passengers a year from Gatwick and to ensure we give them the very best experience we are always working to develop our product, service and schedule.’
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