When an aircraft has already been in service for several days, is an inaugural flight really an inaugural flight? Whatever your view, it certainly didn’t diminish from the fanfare that accompanied Virgin Atlantic’s Airbus A330neo launch to Tampa on November 2. Airliner World editor Craig West sends us this special report from 35,000ft above the Atlantic enroute to the Sunshine State.
It was floral shirts galore as passengers and invited press embraced the ‘tropical Florida’ theme, celebrating not only the official introduction of G-VJAZ (c/n 2018) Billie Holiday – it had flown three rotations to and from Boston prior to this – but also the carrier’s debut at Tampa. Airliner World and Key Aero were invited to travel on the first service to Florida to find out first-hand how the A330neo stacks up against the competition.
Virgin has rightly extolled the aircraft’s green credentials – the Rolls-Royce Trent 7000-powered neo offers an 11% reduction in fuel burn and carbon emissions and is 50% quieter than its predecessor over the typical airport noise contour.
It also brings significant benefits for crew training – as a variant of the A330, it shares a high degre…
