Virgin Nigeria stops London, Johannesburg operations
By UCHE USIM
Saturday, January 10, 2009

As the global financial meltdown forces companies around the world to fold up or shrink their operations, Virgin Nigeria has announced that effective 27th January 2009, flights to London Gatwick, United Kingdom and Johannesburg, South Africa will be suspended.
As a result of this, intending passengers planning to travel to London via the airline on that day will have to buy tickets from other Nigerian airlines like Arik Air and Bellview.

Prior to this announcement, the airline has been cancelled flights on the Johannesburg route.
According to a statement from the management, "the decision to suspend both services is to enable us to review our entire long haul operations including our product offerings on these routes. In the mean time, our focus is on consolidating and continuing to expand our profitable domestic and regional flight operations." The airline further said that once the long haul product review has been finalized, it is certain to return to the long haul routes.
"Loyal customers on our eagle flier scheme who have acquired miles from our long haul flights are assured of the validity of the miles as the eagle flier scheme remains in place.

We apologize for any inconvenience that the suspension may cause our esteemed customers. However, plans have been put in place to re-protect affected customers on other carriers at no extra cost to the customer. We trust our loyal passengers will bear with us as we suspend and review these long haul routes so that we can come back with a truly competitive product offering."
Just last month, Virgin Nigeria laid off some of their staff over what they described as a repositioning exercise.
The airline stated that the move was to streamline its operations for greater efficiency.