Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Virgin wants customers who are "datable and promotable"

From an article about fancy design on Virgin airplanes:
Offering craft beers and snazzy outfits still might not be enough to overcome Virgin America’s biggest problem: It’s an airline. The cost of fuel has more than doubled since Virgin was founded in 2004, and the company has not had a profitable year in the five years since planes officially took off. In 2011 it made 11 percent more per seat flown a mile, an industry benchmark, but suffered an operating loss of $27 million. That’s a 2.6 percent loss at a time when other major carriers are averaging an operational profit of around 5 percent annually.