Virgin Atlantic terminates direct service to Tobago

Less than a year af­ter Vir­gin At­lantic re­sumed ser­vice to To­ba­go, the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed an­nounced it would no longer use Vir­gin At­lantic for air­lift be­tween To­ba­go and the UK.

This is the re­sult of a strate­gic re­view and re­align­ment of the Agency’s in­vest­ment in air­lift for the des­ti­na­tion, according to a re­lease from TTAL.

TTAL has con­firmed that Vir­gin At­lantic will end its di­rect week­ly flight from Lon­don Heathrow to ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go on De­cem­ber 31, 2022. TTAL Ex­ec­u­tive Chair­woman Ali­cia Ed­wards stated that the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue the air­lift con­tract was nec­es­sary because Vir­gin’s flight has not per­formed as well as oth­er car­ri­ers for the re­gion and “is no longer a fi­nan­cial­

Ed­wards stated, “The re­turn on in­vest­ment for the pub­lic sec­tor-funded Vir­gin At­lantic air­lift sub­sidy has de­ter­i­o­rat­ed grad­u­al­ly over the years, to the point where the re­new­al of their con­tract could not be rea­son­able­ly de­fend­ed and exe­cut­

The re­lease said, “After re­view­ing our des­ti­na­tion’s tourist prod­uct, the post-pan­dem­ic status of the in­dus­try, and oth­er tan­gi­ble con­sid­er­a­tions, we have de­ter­mined that To­ba­go is not the ideal match for a part­ner­ship with Vir­gin

On Jan­u­ary 29, 2022, Vir­gin re­instated ser­vice to To­ba­go, fol­low­ing the clo­sure of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bor­ders in March 2020 as a re­sult of the Covid -19 pan­dem­ic.

Ed­wards re­mark­ed that, de­spite Vir­gin’s ser­vice be­ing dis­con­tin­ued, Eu­ro­pean trav­ellers still had oth­er op­tions for reach­ing To­ba­go, in­clud­ing British Air­ways’ twice-weekly ser­vice from Lon­don’s Gat­wick Air­port. She also re­mark­ed that there were reg­u­lar flights from London to Port of Spain, from where one could catch a trip to To­ba­go.

Tuesday, Vir­gin is­sued its own ad­vi­so­ry in which Se­nior Vice Pres­i­dent Do­minic Kennedy ex­plained to cus­tomers that the To­ba­go route will be con­tin­ued.

The state­ment read, “As cus­tomer de­mand con­tin­ues to re­turn strong­ly af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, we’re ad­just­ing up­com­ing fly­ing sched­ules to sup­port the ramp up of our op­er­a­tion and re­flect changes in cus­tomer de­mand out­

As a re­sult, we have im­ple­ment­ed certain mod­i­fi­ca­tions to ser­vice fre­quen­cies and air­craft types and have un­for­tu­nate­ly made some ad­vanc­ed can­cel­la­tions on cer­tain routes for 2023.

The ad­vi­so­ry con­tin­ued, “As part of these sched­ule adjustments, we’ve made the busi­ness de­ci­sion to discontinue our Heathrow to To­ba­go flights on the 11th of Jan­u­ary, 2023. We would like to since­re­ly thank our part­ners in Trinidad and To­ba­go for their years of sup­port. This beau­ti­ful des­ti­na­tion will keep a spe­cial place in our hearts for­ever. We had every in­ten­tion of con­tin­u­ing our ser­vice to the de­si­gna­tion, and it is with deep re­gret that we are unable to do so. We currently have no intentions to operate the service in Win­ter 2023.”