With regards to his several enterprises. The fact that he diversifies so much means he can offset losses on one enterprise with a more profitable venture. Also, if you look at his dealings close enough, he actually sells quite a huge chunk of shares to plough back into another venture with more scope and more opportunities.

One of the dumbest [redacted] articles I have ever seen !!!

????!!!! [redacted] …LOL

So let’s not jump to any conclusions here.

I don’t know a whole lot about any financial history of any airline, but I have flown with VA and I personally liked it. I may not fly them again because they only have the Airbus. You know two of them have already gone down this year! It’s the tail it falls off the plane because its only glued on. Change the fleet to another set of planes and I will be aboard.

eponymous coward wrote:

Out of curiosity, how many airlines had to have their jets sit on the tarmac for close to a year because a bunch of other airlines sued to prevent a DOT operating certificate from being issued? How many airlines had to have their CEO removed as a condition of having an operating certificate issued?

The answer here is none to my knowledge as the rules are written to ensure that US ownership exists for American Carriers just like it does with the Jones Act for maritime vessels. Do we really need even more foreign ownership of our national services? As for Airline CEO’s, the only good ones are operating profitable airlines and they didn’t come from backgrounds of being with the bigger carriers. JetBlue’s CEO is an example because when Southwest bought Morris Air, they were so afraid of David starting up a new airline to compete with them that they had a no compete clause, when the clause time ran out, then JetBlue started up.

Dave wrote:

What does it matter if Virgin America is making money yet or not? They have launched during one of the most challenging periods in air travel history. Airfares are plunging along with demand, and just as late as last summer, fuel prices were astronomical. The company remains on track towards profitability according to their business plan (albeit it has been revised). With the company’s revenues increasing, solid load factors, and decreasing losses where is the bad news here?

Stick a fork in them because they’re done!
1. They don’t cover their costs in order to gain passengers and their RASM is less than their CASM, so they’re bleeding money.
2. The don’t have the proper fleet mix for profitable long haul flights or network carriers to feed traffic to them.
3. The flight legs that they are operating are not profitable in the current economic climate.
4. Their hub of SFO is too expensive to operate out of.
5. They have not picked the proper route structure.
6. They do not utilize the maximum amount of flight time available for each aircraft due to their city pairs, even counting their charter operations.

As for Virgin Atlantic, the margins from the older and less efficient airframes such as the A340’s & 747’s (the A380’s won’t help either), when twin engine widebodies on certain routes would be more cost effective as a percentage of their fleet mix are too small. This combined with their fare structure is what dooms them to making such a low profit percentage due to the expenses of operating in the industry.

Again in regard to JetBlue, it’s not fleet numbers that matter, it’s utilization of the airframes to create maximum income from what you have.

There’s a lot more but those are the main points.

“A”

Is correct that for business VA is not going to make the grade in the USA and that their frequent flyer program cannot compete with the mainline carriers.

“Scott” Is Correct!

“SLAM”

Is correct that US Airlines for the most part have rotten customer service. There are many complexities to operating an airline and the larger an airline gets, the worse it gets because the culture for the most part changes. Southwest is a bit of an exception, but anyone who ever watched episodes of “Airline” on A&E knows what I mean. It starts with an attitude of service which admittedly VA does a pretty good job of, by PanAm did as well and so do many foreign flagged carriers. Frontier does pretty well and so does Alaska, AirTran and Midwest, yet that’s sliding since the takover/buyout by NWA. You don’t have to be the cheapest to have customers, but if you do it right, people will want to fly your airline, you just need to know how to battle the big carriers since they have bigger bankrolls to outlast you or even drive you out of business with and you need to be ready for that going in. To launch VA in this economy was the stupidest thing that they could have done and they’ve doomed themselves to failure, no matter how nice the flight is, unless they get more capital and that’s no guarantee that the sinking ship will stay afloat.

“Allan” Is Correct!
“Trent880” Is Correct!

But maybe the goal should be to attract the passenger who want a nice & respectful experience for a few dollars more on a smaller carrier that cares about it’s customers with a decent route structure and enough flights on a route per day to make people want to fly that carrier (with the right fleet mix). To have a decent frequent flier plan helps as well and there are many good ones out there to pick and choose parts from to create one. This is what most US carriers don’t get.

“Somchai” Needs to have a cup of Chai. JetBlue is going through growing pains, but commits far less errors than the other mainline carriers.

To ‘Wayne” and others… Virgin Blue is only partially owned by Virgin Group and also faces the same ownership issues that Virgin American has, even though they’re now in a better position.

“Alex”

It’s not hatred of Virgin America, the country does need an airline like this, but it is knowing the reality of how the industry operates that shows us the Virgin America is doomed to fail as so many others have done before in the USA and across the globe. Airlines are an ego booster for many “businessmen” but they don’t make a lot of money anywhere unless you’re a flag carrier for a nation. I’d equate it to owning a sports franchise other than ManU or the Yankees, it costs a lot to buy, you don’t make that much profit and you hope to get some profit when you sell the team, but teams don’t go bust as much as airlines do (depending on the league). Read my summation below for more.

I’ve skimmed over the remainder of the comments to save space.

The fact is that I have been around the airline industry my whole life growing up in Seattle (the home of Boeing as we all know) and will be starting a carrier (yes really) in a few years when the economy picks up more and when the airframes that I want to obtain are available (that’s all I’ll say for now on that topic). Virgin America has may attributes, but their business plan is fatally flawed in a time where it is unsustainable to do business in the industry with such an operations plan. They have some good people, but so did many other carriers who have failed before them and no amount of customer praise or optimism can change the financial bottom line. I can’t give away out business plan here, but there will be some attributes from VA’ operations that we’ll utilize (not the mood lighting though) and we’ll make sure our people treat our customers with respect as well, but we’ll remain being a profitable, smaller, privately held airline that’s big enough and frequent enough to serve the majority of the nation and even parts of Canada too. The peanut gallery will laugh here as well (that’s why you avoid being a public company since the so called expert airline analysts will destroy your share price with the chicken little gamblers on Fall Street) but it can be done right if you have the right size and style of operation. You don’t need to be an LCC to succeed, but having fair prices for a great product that make sense, the right fleet, the right routes and a good rewards program for frequent flyers will be what does it. It’s just that simple & surprising that’s it’s so difficult for so many companies to actually do in this country. You’ll all be pleasantly surprised and we’ll be the greenest air carrier around as well and that’s not hype but fact & the reason that we’re a few years offin the future.

Best wishes to all and I hope that you’ll support Virgin America, JetBlue, Frontier, AirTran, Allegiant, Alaska, & Horizon in the mean time!