Virgin Atlantic Delays Open Skies Flights Till 2010

Virgin Atlantic has confirmed that they will not operate a service from continental Europe to the United States for another 2 years at least while it awaits the delivery of new planes.

Despite the "open skies" aviation deal with the US which aims to liberate transatlantic air travel from June onwards, Virgin Group chairman Sir Richard Branson confirmed that they will wait until new second stage of the open skies agreement is reached:

“We want to be careful not to start flying from Europe until a second-stage open skies deal is ratified. We would like to see whether the second stage happens first”.

“What we have always said is that it has to be real open skies...I think phase one of open skies will be something of a damp squib.”

After the UK raised concerns that the open skies deal did not go far enough on US airline ownership rights, the EU agreed to delay plans to implement the deal until March 2008. Open Skies has been criticised by some UK airlines, yet supporters say that the reform will boost competition between airlines and lead to cheaper flights.

Virgin Atlantic, which is part of the Virgin Group, also includes Virgin Holidays. Virgin have recently announced a £1.3 billion order of new low-emission Rolls-Royce engines for its fleet of Boeing planes.