Virgin Atlantic safety record
Virgin Atlantic has never had a fatal accident — not once in more than forty years of flying. On airlines like Virgin Atlantic, the chance of being in a fatal accident is about 1 in 80 million per flight.
No fatal accident for anyone on board, ever in 42 years of flying
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Not a single fatal accident, ever
Since its first flight, from London Gatwick to Newark on 22 June 1984, no Virgin Atlantic flight has had a fatal accident, and it has never lost an aircraft. It flies an all-widebody fleet of 43 — Airbus A350-1000s, A330-900neos and A330-300s, and Boeing 787-9s — from London Heathrow and Manchester, and carried about 5.9 million passengers in 2025.
Its most serious events ended with everyone on board getting out. In November 1997 an A340 from Los Angeles landed at Heathrow with one main landing gear leg stuck partly up; seven people had minor injuries. In February 2005 two engines on an A340-600 from Hong Kong lost power over the Netherlands because a computer fault had stopped fuel moving between its tanks; the crew landed safely at Amsterdam, and the UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) recommended low-fuel warnings for large aircraft.
In April 2012 an A330 bound for Orlando returned to Gatwick after smoke warnings from its cargo hold, and everyone left by the slides; two passengers were seriously hurt in the evacuation. The AAIB found the warnings were false, set off mainly by one faulty detector. In December 2014 a 747 returned to Gatwick and landed with one landing gear leg only partly down, because a part in it had been fitted incorrectly; no one was hurt. Severe turbulence has injured people in the cabin a few times — on a 747 from Nassau in 2005, and on an A340 from Delhi in 2019, when a passenger standing in a galley broke an ankle.
Virgin Atlantic is overseen by the UK Civil Aviation Authority and audited under IATA's operational safety audit (IOSA). It has been in the SkyTeam alliance since 2023 and is 49% owned by Delta.
Nothing to put on the line
Each dot would be a fatal event on a Virgin Atlantic flight. There are none.
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Virgin Atlantic in numbers
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Virgin Atlantic safety questions
How safe is Virgin Atlantic?
Virgin Atlantic has never had a fatal accident — not once in more than forty years of flying. On airlines like Virgin Atlantic, the chance of being in a fatal accident is about 1 in 80 million per flight. Every fact on this page is sourced — the list is at the bottom.
What is Virgin Atlantic's safety rating?
FlyBud doesn't give airlines a made-up score. What can be checked is the record: no fatal accident since its first flight in 1984. It is overseen by the UK Civil Aviation Authority and is a member of IATA, the airlines' trade body, which requires its members to pass IATA's operational safety audit (IOSA).
Has a Virgin Atlantic plane ever crashed?
No. No Virgin Atlantic flight has had a fatal accident since it began flying in 1984, and it has never lost an aircraft. Its most serious events — a landing at Heathrow with a landing gear leg stuck in 1997, and an evacuation at Gatwick in 2012 in which two passengers were seriously hurt — ended with everyone on board getting out.
Where these facts come from
Every fact on this page comes from official accident reports, the airline's own figures or the published accident record.
- Virgin Atlantic Annual Report 2025 Passengers, fleet, IOSA audits
- Wikipedia Founding, first flight, SkyTeam, ownership, accident record
- Wikipedia Flight 024, Heathrow 1997 (AAIB report 4/2000)
- AAIB A340-600 fuel transfer, Amsterdam 2005
- AAIB A330 evacuation, Gatwick 2012
- AAIB 747 landing gear, Gatwick 2014
- AAIB 747 turbulence, 2005
- BEA (AAIB-led investigation) A340 turbulence, 2019
- IATA IOSA registry IOSA registration (NOT yet read — Cloudflare; check in a browser)
- MIT News / Journal of Air Transport Management (Barnett, 2024) risk per flight 2018–2022
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