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16 May 2025

Tried and tested: Is the Virgin Atlantic sale worth it? How experts saved £179 on flights to the Maldives

Plus, your deadline for saving hundreds on long-haul trips

Kate Pasola

A new Virgin Atlantic sale has landed – and our price checks show it does have great deals

It's difficult to work out whether a flight sale offers real deals or is just another marketing ploy. So, we put Virgin Atlantic’s latest offer to the test.

We compared 10 direct flights from Heathrow to popular holiday destinations, including Johannesburg, Los Angeles, the Maldives, New York, San Francisco and Toronto, departing between May 2025 and March 2026, to see if other airlines had cheaper deals on the same dates. We chose the destinations and dates that Virgin promoted on its sale page, and compared that with other airlines via Skyscanner.

Nine out of the 10 flights we checked in the Virgin Atlantic sale were the cheapest available. This included return flights to the Maldives for £593 that were £179 cheaper with Virgin than any other airline.

We also checked flights to Bridgetown, Lagos and Orlando, and didn't find flights cheaper than those in the Virgin Atlantic sale.

And while many of the flights listed on Virgin Atlantic’s sale homepage were hand-luggage only, in nine out of 10 cases where Virgin had the cheapest fare, it was still cheaper to fly with it even after adding a checked bag.

Your deadline to book in the Virgin Atlantic sale

To take advantage of the Virgin Atlantic sale, you’ll need to book before 2 June 2025.

Scroll down to see the best deals we found in the sale and for our tips when navigating the Virgin’s sale page.

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Best Virgin deal: 23% off flights to the Maldives

We found return flights to Malé in the Maldives from 2 to 17 January 2026 for £593.92. The next cheapest flight we found on the same day was with British Airways for £772.92 – that’s a saving of £179 if you book with Virgin. The flights are hand luggage only, but flying with Virgin is still the cheaper option if you want to take a checked-in bag, at £643.92 compared with British Airway’s £727.92.

Looking for holiday inspiration? Find out the best world destinations in 2025.

£121 off flights to San Francisco

With the Virgin Atlantic sale you could get a return trip to San Francisco for £397.22, which is £121 cheaper than the next-best price we found on Skyscanner, flying with United Airlines (via the Brussels Airlines website) for £518.22.

Return flights to the US for less than £400 is a very good deal, although prices for flights to the US are falling in general at the moment due to reduced appetite for holidays to the country. There was one only exception in our research – flights from Heathrow to Los Angeles in the Virgin sale were £11 cheaper via British Airways.

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Booking a trip in the Virgin Atlantic sale? Follow these tips:

1. Head to the Virgin sale homepage to find its latest sale deals.

2. Search for the destinations you want to visit or scroll to the suggested deals you’re interested in.

3. Check the price once you’re redirected to a list of flights – Virgin specifies that 'fares displayed have been collected within the last 48 hours and may no longer be available at time of booking'. Althhough this only happened to us three times out of 10, and by less than £10 in every instance.

4. Check the flight you’re booking is direct – some of the flights in the deal to destinations such as Cancun and Vancouver are indirect flights.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that these flight deals are on sale for a reason. Most fall during the shoulder or off-season, which helps keep prices low. And travellers with flexibility when it comes to dates and durations of trips will likely get the best deals – some depart as early as next week, while others have unusual durations, such as shorter breaks to longer haul destinations.

5. You can never guarantee this is the absolute cheapest price for a ticket. Flight fares go and up and down ahead of the departure time in relation to demand, and it’s impossible to predict those changes. But the deals we saw in the Virgin Atlantic sale were good.

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Routes available in the Virgin sale

London Gatwick (LGW) to New York (JFK)
London Heathrow (LHR) to Atlanta (ATL)
London Heathrow (LHR) to Boston (BOS)
London Heathrow (LHR) to Detroit (DTW)
London Heathrow (LHR) to Washington, D.C. (IAD)
London Heathrow (LHR) to New York (JFK)
London Heathrow (LHR) to Las Vegas (LAS)
London Heathrow (LHR) to Los Angeles (LAX)
London Heathrow (LHR) to Orlando (MCO)
London Heathrow (LHR) to Miami (MIA)
London Heathrow (LHR) to Malé, Maldives (MLE)
London Heathrow (LHR) to Minneapolis–St Paul (MSP)
London Heathrow (LHR) to Riyadh (RUH)
London Heathrow (LHR) to Seattle (SEA)
London Heathrow (LHR) to San Francisco (SFO)
London Heathrow (LHR) to Salt Lake City (SLC)
London Heathrow (LHR) to Tampa (TPA)
London Heathrow (LHR) to Toronto (YYZ)
London Heathrow (LHR) to Cancún (CUN)
Edinburgh (EDI) to Atlanta (ATL)
Edinburgh (EDI) to Boston (BOS)
Edinburgh (EDI) to Orlando (MCO)
Edinburgh (EDI) to New York (JFK)
Manchester (MAN) to Atlanta (ATL)
Manchester (MAN) to Las Vegas (LAS)
Manchester (MAN) to Orlando (MCO)