Richard's Blog - 2010

Virgin gets World Cup fever

World Cup fever is gripping the globe at the moment and the Virgin Group is no exception.Today we are very proud to fly the England World Cup squad to Johannesburg on a special Virgin Atlantic plane ready for the big kick off.This is a great honour for Virgin Atlantic and we are delighted they have chosen to fly with us on our award-winning Upper Class Suite. Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard and the rest of the squad will choose from a specially tailored menu on the Airbus A340-600 and our world-…

Meeting the Elders in Joburg

I'm in Johannesburg to meet with the Elders, very excited as they are all here...  It is wonderful to have all the Elders here in Joburg: Nelson Mandela, Graca Machel, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan, President Carter, Mary Robinson, Ella Bhatt, Martti Ahtisaari, Lakhdar Brahimi and Gro Bruntland.The Elders will be discussing a range of topics including the many conflict situations the world faces to equality for women and other areas where they can get involved and make a di…

Giving business tips on Junior Apprentice

Last night I popped up on Junior Apprentice, Lord Alan Sugar's BBC UK show to find promising new businesspersons to mentor.After a task involving selling cupcakes, the winning team came to have tea with me, where I was able to give them some entrepreneurial advice.I told the contestants: do everything you can to succeed and then if you do fail, you would have learnt a lot - so try again.I also quizzed them on the difference between net and gross, something I didn't know myself until I was 50 yea…

My day at Fast Track 100

Here is the story of my day hosting the Fast Track 100 event. I got the chance to meet talented new businessmen from the Branson School of Entrepreneurship. I also spent time with competition winners, as well as students from the Branson Scholars programme, all with the help of Virgin Unite. Find out more about Fast Track 100, or head over to Virgin Unite, our non-profit foundation, to find out more about the amazing projects the team is involved in.…

Launching Virgin Holidays' first ever liveried plane

Today we launched our first ever liveried plane in honour of Virgin Holidays' 25th anniversary.Reaching 25 years is a fantastic milestone for Virgin Holidays, and I am extremely proud to be here to share in the celebrations. The travel industry is in the business of creating special memories, and everyone at Virgin Holidays can look back a successful quarter century of doing just that. Virgin Holidays' alliance with Universal Orlando Resort is just one reason why our holiday makers can be as…

We launch Virgin Mobile Qatar

Virgin Mobile is the fastest-growing and most successful business in Virgin’s history, with more than fifteen million customers around the world. Virgin Mobile Qatar is an entirely new type of mobile experience, which everybody can start enjoying from today. I am proud to have partnered with Qtel to make Virgin Mobile Qatar our first mobile launch in the Middle East, and I would like to invite the people of Qatar to come on in and enjoy the fun. We’re open! read the full new…

Congratulations to all Virgin London Marathon runners!

Well done to everyone who ran the very first Virgin London Marathon. It was a pretty amazing day and I’m pleased it wasn’t as hot as they’d predicted or my butterfly wings wouldn’t have coped! I managed to complete the 26.2 miles in 5 hours 2 minutes which I’m more than happy with – thanks to runner extraordinaire and world record holder Tegla LaRoupe who kindly mentored me through my training as well as running beside me on Sunday. Thanks also to my te…

Guest editing The Big Issue

Please be sure to check out the 19th April edition of The Big Issue, which I’ve guest-edited along with Virgin Unite, the Virgin Group’s non-profit foundation.This weekly entertainment and current affairs magazine offers homeless and vulnerably housed people in the UK the opportunity to earn an income.As guest editors, we cover topics from climate change to entrepreneurship to running my first marathon to support vulnerable young people in the UK. The edition also features Virgin Un…

Dealing with volcanic ash and the flight standstill

I am very relieved that European airspace is open again. We are now focused on getting everyone back as soon as possible and this is a big task. To help speed this up we are urging the UK Government to charter additional aircraft to accelerate the repatriation of the many tens of thousands of people stranded overseas. I'm proud of the Virgin Atlantic team who have been working around the clock to keep passengers informed and looked after. It has been a an immense strain on everyone and we h…

Good luck to Bob & the Virgin marathon runners

100 Virgin employees are running the Virgin London Marathon with me in 2 weeks. One of them, Bob, has been keeping a video blog which you can watch here virgin.com/marathon. I just want to say good luck to Bob and all the Virgin runners and I look forward to seeing you all on the starting line! We're raising money for Virgin Unite, our non-profit foundation, to support our innovative grassroots partners to improve the lives of vulnerable young people in the UK. Bob has visited…

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