Virgin Atlantic booking check and airport guide for Indian travellers

How to look up a booking on Virgin Atlantic

1. 1Open the Manage booking page on virginatlantic.com (India site).
2. 2If you booked only flights, choose Manage flight booking; holidays and flight-plus-hotel bookings have their own portals.
3. 3On My Trips, enter the booking details from your confirmation exactly as printed.
4. 4Check names, dates, both Heathrow legs and any IndiGo connection to another Indian city.
5. 5For a paid trip, save or print the e-ticket or boarding pass, since Indian terminals ask for one at the entrance.
6. 6An unpaid reservation has no e-ticket, so it will not get you through a terminal entrance in India.

No fare hold on Virgin Atlantic, and what to use instead

We found no official way to hold a Virgin Atlantic fare. The India and help sitemaps on virginatlantic.com have no hold or price-lock page; the only match for “hold” was a page about household accounts. Since 1 June 2025 Virgin has also stopped accepting cash for tickets or extras at Indian airports and through its contact centre, so paying later at a counter is not possible either.

For a visa application that leaves one option: a flight reservation in your name, held without payment, that shows the Heathrow route you intend. It is not a Virgin ticket and cannot be checked in. The airline sets how long the unpaid hold lasts, so ask for it on the day of your VFS appointment and check it straight away.

If the trip is a UK visit, GOV.UK treats flight bookings as less useful evidence for a Standard Visitor visa, so a reservation is optional there. It documents your planned dates; it does not argue your case.

Virgin’s check-in desks at Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru

Virgin’s airport guides are unusually specific. In Delhi all Virgin flights use Terminal 3, with desks in Row E, counters 8 to 14, for VS301 and VS303; counter check-in opens four hours before departure and closes one hour before. In Mumbai flights use Terminal 2: enter through Gate 7 and look for Island L. The same four-hour to one-hour window applies, and a mobile boarding pass can be used at immigration.

Bengaluru is Terminal 2, Row E, desks 10 to 15, opening three and a half hours before departure and closing one hour before; Virgin recommends arriving three and a half hours early. Online check-in lets you choose a seat and print the boarding card, and passengers with cabin bags only can skip the desk. The online check-in window itself was not confirmed.

The Mumbai and Bengaluru guides warn that entering the terminal needs a boarding pass or e-ticket, printed or on your phone. Keep the paid e-ticket for that door; a flight reservation is for the visa file only and is not a ticket to travel on.

Connecting at Heathrow on an Indian passport

If you connect at Heathrow for North America, the UK rule that matters is the Direct Airside Transit visa. GOV.UK says Indians normally need one to change planes without passing immigration, but its exemptions begin with “a visa for Canada, New Zealand, Australia or the USA (this can be used for travel to any country)”. A valid US visa therefore covers the Heathrow change on a Delhi–London–US trip.

Without one of the listed documents you need a DATV, currently £41.50. A Schengen short-stay visa does not count, and an e-visa is accepted only if the airline can verify it with the issuing country. Indians are not eligible for the UK ETA, while a Standard Visitor visa does exempt you.

Collecting bags, changing airports or flying on with a separate booking takes you through border control, which calls for a Visitor in Transit visa (£74.50, onward within 48 hours) or Transit Without Visa if you qualify. Keep the India flight and the onward flight on one Virgin booking with bags checked to the end.

Virgin’s India flights and partner connections

Virgin marked 25 years of flying to India in June 2025, with one daily flight to Bengaluru and two daily to both Mumbai and Delhi on the A350. The IndiGo codeshare brings other Indian cities onto a Virgin booking. Virgin’s pages put the number at 34 or 36 destinations depending on the page, and its India page links Goa, Kochi and Amritsar, which appear to be IndiGo connections.

On 1 June 2025 Virgin joined IndiGo, Delta and Air France-KLM in a memorandum on network, loyalty, cargo and sales. No 2026 India press release appeared on Virgin’s index when we checked. If your family includes OCI cardholders or foreign passport holders, Virgin’s travel news covers India’s digital arrival card: required for all non-Indian passport holders, available up to 72 hours before arrival, and separate from an e-Visa.

Virgin Atlantic at Indian airports

Virgin Atlantic questions, answered