New | Virgin Atlantic fleet upgrade key to sustained profit growth

Virgin Atlantic will deploy its new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner for the London-Hong Kong route from next month, as part of a £2 billion airline-wide fleet upgrade that chief executive Craig Kreeger hopes will raise profitability.

Kreeger, who has just brought the airline back into the black for the first time in three years, told the South China Morning Post that Hong Kong and Shanghai, Virgin's only destinations in North Asia after it cut Tokyo, were critical for it to grow outside its core transatlantic business.

"Our expectation is that within a four-year period, we will be earning more than the company's best year ever," Kreeger said, referring to 1999, when Virgin made £99 million.

Launched by British billionaire Richard Branson, Virgin Atlantic has made a mark in customer experience since it was founded in 1984. But its profitability has struggled.

The airline, now 51 per cent owned by Branson's Virgin Group and the rest by America's Delta Air Lines, earned £14.4 million in 2014, after losses of £69.9 million the year before.

Kreeger said the partnership with Delta, including operating their transatlantic routes on a joint-venture basis since 2013, was "clearly helping" to generate traffic and strengthening Virgin's position in that market, which accounts for 70 per cent of its capacity now.

He said he estimated "above £10 million" of the airline's 2014 profit was attributable to the partnership. "We expect that number to grow as the partnership matures, and we are already seeing positive signs of that."