At Virgin Atlantic we never stand still, and we constantly strive to improve our customer experience. The development of our new Airbus A330neo was a perfect opportunity to evolve our product for our customers, to ensure we continue to deliver contemporary experiences that meet consumer needs.

One of the key areas we focussed our efforts was on our iconic and award-winning onboard social space, which is a long-standing core feature within our Upper Class experience. In an evolution of design from the Airbus A350, our A330neo social space, known as the Loft, is a product for up to eight people to enjoy at any one time, with four comfortable seats.

Following an extensive customer insight and consumer trend review, we identified an opportunity to develop a self-service element to our offering (additional to our core food and beverage service), to support emerging in-flight customer needs. So in response, as we developed the A330neo Loft product concept, we incorporated 2 self-service fridge/ freezers to allow customers to graze on their own terms.

The self-service fridge/freezer represents a big step forward in food and beverage experience for customers flying on our new aircraft. The units, known as tri-mode chillers, have three functions – fridge, freezer and chiller, which affords us the flexibility to easily configure them in either a refrigeration or freezing function dependent on the food and beverage selection on offer. With two units being present, we have the opportunity to offer customers frozen products like ice cream on one side, and chilled drinks on the other.

This addition to our product offer has created a new dimension to our onboard experience. Upper Class customers flying on our A330neo are now benefitting from an exciting on-demand service offering, with amazing new product availability.