Delta/Virgin Atlantic Business Class From $1,787/£1,350 (UK – New York)

---

TravelingForMiles.com may receive commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on TravelingForMiles.com are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. TravelingForMiles.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers.

Some links to products and travel providers on this website will earn Traveling For Miles a commission which helps contribute to the running of the site – I’m very grateful to anyone who uses these links but their use is entirely optional. The compensation does not impact how and where products appear on this site and does not impact reviews that are published.

Manchester appears to be the center of a mini fare war between American Airlines and Delta/Virgin Atlantic and this is great news for UK-based travelers. I’m running two back-to-back posts today which separate out the Delta/Virgin and American Airlines fare to make each a little easier to read and digest – this post details the Delta/Virgin Atlantic fare so, if you’re looking for the American Airlines fare follow this link.

At the end of the first week in July I posted some great American Airlines Business Class fares between Manchester and Chicago (still available!) and now I’ve just noticed that both American and Delta/Virgin Atlantic have some great fares between Manchester and New York too.

I’m going to hold my hands up and say I don’t know how long these fares have been available (I may have missed it in previous searches) but that doesn’t really matter right now. What does matter is that you can fly direct from Manchester to New York for $1,787/£1,350 between September 2016 and June 2017….and that’s a great fare for a departure from the UK.

Fare Rules In Brief

This doesn’t appear to be a sale fare (the fare rules don’t show an end date for the fares) so these could disappear at any time.

The highlights of the fare rules are:

• Travel dates are September 2016 to June 2017 (may extend into July)
• Must book a minimum of 28 days in advance
• Saturday night stop required for best fares
• Maximum stay is 12 months
• Unlimited paid stopovers at £300 each

Delta/Virgin Atlantic: Manchester – New York Business Class From $1,787/£1,350

Availability on Delta/Virgin Atlantic is excellent for most months (don’t be put off by the lack of orange numbers in October, there are still some excellent fares available).

I’ve set out screenshots of what availability looks like in each month (from September to June) below – just click each month to enlarge the view in a new window:

September

October

Note the availability during the October school vacations/holidays

November

December

Plenty of opportunities for pre-Christmas shopping in New York (although the exchange rate probably means that decent savings will be hard to find) and you can even spend Christmas or New Year in New York with these fares.

January

February

More availability when schools are out, this time during the February school break.

March

April

Easter in New York – a great time of year to visit (one of my favorites as it’s not extra busy and it’s not humid)

May

June

So, having taken a look at all of that, you can’t really complain about availability!

For most of the travel period the flights are with Delta (although they can be booked as Virgin Atlantic and KLM codeshares)…..

….but, from 25 May 2017, Virgin Atlantic is taking over the route with one of its Airbus A330 aircraft:

Importantly, these flights price up easily on both Delta and Virgin Atlantic’s websites so there should be no trouble booking something you find on ITA Matrix:

Delta & Virgin Atlantic Aircraft

Delta flys its Boeing 767 on this route with 26 flat bed DeltaOne seats, 29 Delta Comfort Seats and 171 standard economy class seats:

Seat map courtesy of SeatGuru.com (click image to enlarge in new window)

There’s quite a bit of good news with this aircraft as not only is the DeltaOne product not bad at all (it offers all-aisle access) but, if not everybody on your trip is going to sit up front, the Economy class seats have a width of almost 18″ which is excellent for a trans-Atlantic flight.

The Delta Comfort seats are no wider than their Economy Class counterparts but they do come with around 4″ more leg room.

Once Virgin Atlantic takes over the route for summer 2017 (from 25 May) it will operate it with its A330-300 aircraft featuring 33 Upper Class “suites”, 48 Premium Economy seats and 185 regular Economy Class seats:

Seat map courtesy of SeatGuru.com (click image to enlarge in new window)

Just like DeltaOne seats the Virgin Atlantic Upper Class suites come with all-aisle-access and are arranged in a 1-2-1 layout across the cabin….

Virgin Atlantic Upper Class Cabin – Image courtesy of Virgin Atlantic

….and the seats for suite-like pods:

Virgin Atlantic Upper Class Suite – Image courtesy of Virgin Atlantic

These seats have had mixed reviews (I haven’t tried them yet) but, let’s face it, they’re light-years of what you’ll get in Economy Class so how bad can it be? 🙂

Finding The Delta & Virgin Atlantic Business Class Fares

As usual I used the ITA Matrix search to find these fares so, if you want to replicate my results, that’s probably the place to start.

If you’re not sure how to use the ITA Matrix search you’ll find an ITA Matrix beginners guide here and a slightly more advanced ITA Matrix guide here.

Here are the parameters I suggest you use to find the better Delta/Virgin Atlantic fares:

Clearly you should change the departure date and the length of stay to whatever suits you best but, if you leave the rest of the settings as shown, you should be able to find the same fares as I did.

Once you’ve found a set of flights that works for you you’ll have to go to one of the airlines’ website or to your preferred OTA and purchase the fare there (ITA Matrix cannot sell you a ticket).

Bottom Line

There are very good fares for a departure from a UK airport and, as we don’t know when the fares will disappear, I’d book sooner rather than later if you find something that works for you.

I appreciate that most readers of this blog are probably AA/BA/OneWorld flyers so you’ll be much more interested in the American Airlines fare I’ve posted as well…but don’t disregard this option too quickly.

Sure, if you’re trying make status or earn Avios/AAdvantage Miles then the American Airlines fare will be better for you but, otherwise, this option offers the better aircraft by far – have a look at the American Airlines post to see what I mean.