Puerto Rico to BVI revisited

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 was on an American Airlines plane in Puerto Rico about to fly to the British Virgin Islands. The captain came on the speaker and said ‘the powers that be at head office have told us we are only 50% full and they are going to combine flights’. They cancelled our flight and asked us all to come back at 7am the next morning.

I was upset because I’d been three weeks away from Joan (who is now my wonderful wife). As you can imagine, I was very keen to be reunited with her in the BVI that night!

Image by Virgin.com

As we got off the plane, I asked those 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.

As we landed, a passenger tapped me on the shoulder and said: “Virgin Airways isn’t too bad - smarten up the service and you could be in business.” It sparked the idea for Virgin Atlantic. The very next day I rang up Boeing and asked if they had any second-hand 747s for sale. The rest is history.

Virgin

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 that be said 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.

Virgin Limited Edition

This time, it got me wondering whether we should set up a small airline in the Caribbean. 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 of these airlines ultimately started because of that original American Airlines BVI flight cancellation all those years ago. Old habits die hard!

(P.S – the American Airlines crew could not have been more delightful.)