Virgin Atlantic’s first Airbus A350-1000 “Red Velvet” has landed at London Heathrow

Virgin Atlantic’s new Airbus A350-1000 aircraft has landed in London for the final finishing touches before its inaugural flight. Named ‘Red Velvet’, it will be painted with one of the airline’s new flying icons and will fly to New York for the first time in September. 

Red Velvet is the first of 12 Airbus A350 aircraft that the airline has ordered, with the second – Mamma Mia – due to arrive soon. Both aircraft will operate flights between London and New York – and you can book your seat now.

Why Red Velvet?

You might be wondering where the name Red Velvet has come from. Virgin Atlantic has always given its planes unique names, based on the official aircraft registration codes.

Liz East, from Virgin Atlantic’s design team, explains how aircraft receive their names: “Once we have a confirmed order of new aircraft, the internal brand team are given the task of looking at both potential names and registrations. It’s a bit of a complex process and not as easy as just thinking of a list of fun names (though that helps!). 

“It’s no good coming up with a fabulous name if there’s not an available registration that will work with it. With all our registrations starting with G-V that leaves three letters to play with. Sometimes we can spell a word beginning with V – for example, G-VAST, Ladybird. But the majority of the time we just have three letters to make a connection to a name. Plus, the last two letters will be the aircraft’s unique call sign, so cannot be the same as the last two letters of any other registration in the Virgin Atlantic fleet.”

Red Velvet’s registration code is G-VLUX, so the team were in search of something uniquely red and luxurious. Inspired by the afternoon teas served onboard, they came up with Red Velvet – the perfect luxury treat.

Source: Virgin Atlantic