30/09/2025
A wise man once said: history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. I just experienced that with an episode very similar to the one which led to the start of Virgin Atlantic...
When I was 28 years old, I due to fly on an American Airlines flight to the BVI when it was cancelled. I ask the other passengers who wanted to get to the BVI that night to wait. I went to the back of the airport, hoped my credit card wouldn’t bounce, hired a plane, and found a blackboard. As a joke, I wrote ‘Virgin Airways: $39 single flight’ and filled up the plane with all my fellow stranded passengers. The rest is history.
Fast forward to yesterday, when once again I found myself on an Americans Airlines flight from Miami to the BVI. We were diverted to Puerto Rico due to bad weather. We were then told, once again, by the powers in head office that be, that we had to get off the plane and return at 7am the next morning. Déjà vu!
But our forecast showed the weather in the BVI was going to clear up in a couple of hours. So once again I went around and talked to as many passengers as I could and asked: “Who would like to fly this afternoon?” Enough people said yes to warrant a small airline, Inter-Caribbean Airways, flying us to the BVI later that afternoon. No blackboard required!
We filled the airplane with our fellow passengers, made some delightful new friends, and enjoyed a great flight to the BVI.
It’s amusing to think that Virgin Atlantic has been flying for 42 years, Virgin Australia for 25 years, and Virgin America flew for 11 years – all these airlines were started due to that original decision from American Airlines to cancel our flight to the BVI. Old habits die hard!
https://bit.ly/3VVqyon
