June 22 is going to be a momentous date for the Virgin group of companies as it marks the 25th anniversary of the momentous first flight by Virgin Atlantic.
Following in the pioneering footsteps of Sir Freddie Laker and his low-fare transatlantic Skytrain airline in the 1970s, Richard Branson’s airline took to the skies for the first time in summer 1984 on an inaugural flight to Newark using a single leased Boeing 747.
I am long enough in the tooth to recall attending Virgin Atlantic route launches to Los Angeles and Boston in the early 1990s.
Prior to that, I was among the many students who took advantage of the amazing opportunity to fly to New York with Laker in the mid-1970s at prices that seemed unimaginable at the time.
The cost of flying and foreign holidays has remained remarkably low in the intervening years, helped in no small measure by the so-called little guys like Laker and Branson.
The now knighted Virgin boss has had to overcome a battering from many quarters in the past quarter of a century. This turbulence ranged from ‘dirty tricks’ attacks by British Airways, to Gulf wars and the 2001 terrorist attacks on the US.
Yet Virgin Atlantic has survived and thrived as an aviation pace-setter, attracting investment of more than £600 million from Singapore Airlines almost ten years ago in return for a 49% shareholding.
Virgin Holidays, also established in 1984, is an integral part of the group as is Virgin Holidays Cruises. The holidays arm carried 14,000 holidaymakers in its first year and is expected to handle around 400,000 this year.
I mention this as I have just returned from Tokyo where Sir Richard was celebrating 20 years of flying to Japan in his inimitable style – wearing a red kimono for a massive party for 500 people complete with suitable Eighties music like Madonna and Duran Duran and a casino. Take it from me, it was quite a night.
His enthusiasm for the airline its tour operating offshoots and Virgin Trains remains boundless as does his passion for finding pioneering solutions to combat global warming, including a commitment that all profits from the group’s transport interests be invested in projects to develop new renewable technologies over the next decade.
When I caught up with him the afternoon after the 12-hour flight from London, he enthused about future opportunities for his assortment of travel interests and stressed that Virgin Atlantic would still be around for another 25 years despite other airlines falling by the wayside under financial pressures.
Sir Richard is fighting on a number of fronts against what he sees as unfair competition – not least a third attempt by British Airways and American Airlines to forge a transatlantic pact which he believes would effectively create a massive monopoly at Heathrow to the detriment of other airlines and passengers.
He also took the opportunity to attack the government over its plans to further hike an airline tax called Air Passenger Duty, pledging to highlight to the public the cost to the industry with information on all tickets and across the group’s travel websites.
There’s little doubt that without the entrepreneurial spirit of the late Sir Freddie and, for the past 25 years, Richard Branson, travel and holidays would have been far less accessible to many people.
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