Worrying message

I just booked a flight to BOS in July but got the following message prior to booking.

****START****
Please note that flights between London Gatwick / Boston and vice versa, are subject to government approval. These flights will be operated by Boeing 747-200 aircraft leased by Virgin Atlantic from Air Atlanta. However, you can expect the same high level of service as our regular operated flights, including full Virgin Atlantic livery, our own crew and award winning entertainment.
****END****

First of all they made an error mentioning Gatwick as they dont fly to Boston from Gatwick (have emailed them about this), secondly why would they say the flight is "subject to government approval"? Does this mean they dont know for sure that the flight will go ahead? Is there a chance it will get cancelled before I fly and leave me high and dry (not literally of course!).

Comments please......

[mitchja]

This must be the new Summer LGW-BOS service in addition to the normal LHR-BOS service (VS 53/54 I beleive). I think VS were going to start this route last year but it never took off.

'subject to government approval' measn VS hasn't actually got the licence to fly the route yet but it's in the pipeline (hopefully).

This happend to us when we flew to Barbados with VH the first year they started Caribbean holidays - the VS licence wasn't granted in time so we were put on a nasty BA flight instead.

I wont be impressed if that happens!

[RichardMannion]

Hi Jonathan,

What's your flight number?

The Manchester routes are served by Air Atlanta on Virgin's behalf - nothing to worrya bout.

Before 9/11 - BOS used to go out of LGW (did this routing once) and then it shifted to LHR to take up one of the freed up slots from the schedule removals such as the NYC flight and ORD.

Thanks,
Richard

July 23rd - VS11 LHR-BOS
August 1st - VS56 BOS-LHR

Booked Expedia in the end which said the outbound is a 747-400 although the config on the seat pinpointer looks like a 747-200 when compaired with the seat plans on this site.

The way back shows as an A340-300.

Thanks

If I now go to book this flight it no longer comes up with a message about Air Atlanta or anything about government approval.