Virgin will end its service to Tokyo in favour of US routes.

British airline Virgin Atlantic Airways is to scrap some routes as part of a long-term plan to achieve record profitability by 2018.

The plan also sees a new daily service starting between London and the US city of Detroit, as well as increased frequencies on some transatlantic routes.

The services being withdrawn are flights from London to Tokyo, Mumbai, Vancouver and Cape Town.

The last Tokyo and Mumbai flights will be on February 1, 2015, while the Vancouver service will not operate after the summer season finishes on October 11 this year.

Cape Town flights will end on April 27.

Virgin said that it would be operating more than 500 extra flights in summer 2015 compared with this summer.

There will be additional daily services between London and New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, San Francisco and Miami, while American carrier Delta, which has a 49 per cent stake in Virgin, will launch a new daily service between Manchester and New York next summer.

The plan sees a new daily service between London and the US city of Detroit

Virgin made a pre-tax loss of €62.6 million in 2013 and a pre-tax loss of €127.7 million in 2012.

Virgin Atlantic chief executive Craig Kreeger said earlier this week: “Our ambition is to be profitable for the long term, earn competitive returns and invest those into providing the very best experience for our customers on the routes they most want to fly.”