The empire of Richard Branson, one of the richest men in the world thanks to a personal fortune of 5.2 billion dollars, is in danger. The Covid pandemic has grounded its planes, blocked its ships and trains. Thousands of people have been laid off, and hopes of avoiding global bankruptcy are now pinned on only two businesses: space travel and high-speed tunnels.
Virgin Atlantic, the airline that carried 5.4 million passengers in 2018, is in a sea of trouble and has requested access to bankruptcy protection in the United States. It needs $ 1.5 billion to continue to be solvent and even if flights are resumed after a long hiatus, profits will only revise in 2022, as long as Covid doesn’t complicate things further.
Three months ago Virgin Australia had declared insolvency and closed the activities of low cost Tigerair. The group laid off 6,500 people and closed the office at London’s Gatwick Airport. Business is also not doing well on other fronts linked to the world of transport, put in crisis by the epidemic. The agreement with the Brightline Trains railway company, which operates the route between Miami and West Palm Beach in Florida, appears to have been blown.
The group is now kept on its feet only by the most futuristic activities of the enterprising Branson, who founded Virgin Galactic in 2004 with the aim of creating a vector that would take people into space for a tourist trip. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange last October and has already registered 600 bookings at a cost of $ 250,000 per ticket. The first flight is getting closer and if all goes well, $ 150 million in possible earnings are expected.
Virgin Hyperloop, the company founded in 2014 to transport passengers inside a tunnel at speeds greater than those of an airliner, is also booming, but at a fraction of the cost. The first tests in Nevada confirmed that it is possible to run a train at 1,200 kilometers per hour on a magnetic levitation rail inside a low-pressure tunnel. A few weeks ago, the clearance from the US Departement of Transportation arrived and the first possible routes are already being studied. It will probably start with Los Angeles-Las Vegas, but there are already plans for India and Europe as well. If the old ways of travel are in crisis, science fiction can become reality faster.
–
