Valentine’s Day is special and we see many people go out of their way to express their love and affection. Exchange of gifts, surprises, vacations or simply spending time together – these are some ways in which the day gets spent. But what Virgin Atlantic did this year, was unprecedented! A true meaning of ‘going the extra mile!’ in this case, it was a few 100 miles!!
A Virgin Atlantic flight took off from London’s Gatwick Airport and flew to UK’s southwest coast to draw a heart-shaped flight course on the occasion of Valentine’s Day. The Airbus A330 plane took off from London at 11.30am and spent about two hours creating a Valentine-appropriate heart-shaped flight path measuring about 100 miles in length.
The unique flight path was spotted by air traffic monitoring portal “Flight radar 24” which shared a screenshot of the flight’s route.
❤ ✈ @VirginAtlantic is drawing a giant heart in the sky to celebrate #ValentinesDay2018 ✈ ❤
Follow live at https://t.co/g2xxOPgLRK pic.twitter.com/k8PgCkstZP
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) February 14, 2018
Though many quarters of the society applauded the airline for this surprise gesture, there were some who were not impressed at all. Twitter was full of reactions as people called it a wastage of aviation fuel and a cause for possible delays.
However, the airline was quick in responding and clarified that the flight was for training purposes only.
“This was a required training flight that happened to take place on Valentine’s Day, so we altered the flight path slightly to make a heart shape,” Virgin Atlantic said in tweets.
The airline later shared an animation of the flight drawing the heart 30,000 feet in the sky.
Happy Valentine’s day! In case you missed it, here’s our Airbus on it’s heart-shaped training flight earlier today! #LoveisintheAirbus #ValentinesDay 📽: https://t.co/2aXGiKF7Dm pic.twitter.com/GwIKehh2OS
— Virgin Atlantic (@VirginAtlantic) February 14, 2018