Originally Posted by
rotorwings
What a load of rubbish people write on here… it’s incredibly sad to see people wanting to see an iconic British airline fail because they heard or made up incorrect facts about SRB and Virgin, I’m guessing many of you are Daily Mail readers or believe D. Trump too much.
Virgin Atlantic has been providing innovate idea’s in the whole global airline industry since the start of VAA, from being the first to introduce In-Flight Entertainment to the first flat beds onboard. They are the David of the David vs Goliath story with BA. Without VAA always snapping at BA’s heels, BA would be an awful airline, they need that healthy competition to keep innovation and keep pushing to provide fantastic service for their customers.
Virgin Atlantic only has about 45 aircraft compared to BA’s 280 ish.. and they hardly make any profit, so for people to say that SRB is a tax con are deluded. If you were in his position, wouldn’t you move to the BVI’s if you constantly had nasty people and press constantly putting you down. They aren’t asking for a bail out but rather a loan, so again its not a burden on tax payers.
Have you thought about all the corporation tax his companies pay and that he has created jobs for over 71,000 people globally? It’s more than anyone on this forum can say. It’s such a cut throat industry and to make any profit is bloody hard especially when you're up against BA who has had everything handed to them on a plate by the government. I’m not against BA but you need people like SRB to break the mould and think outside the box and keep big corporations like BA in check and not runaway with the market share.
Be a positive person and strive for success in British industries, not failure. Check your facts before you write rubbish please.
AFAIK BA and AF were first to introduce lie flat beds in F somewhere around 95/96, with Virgin introducing them in J in 1999
As for tax fraud, he started out by claiming to export records, getting the paperwork stamped at Dover, and then driving them back to London to be sold avoiding the 33% levy that should have added to them.
Yeh Branson done some interesting stuff but who do billionaires really benefit?