Originally Posted by
jayme
gloopy,
Why would VA lose so much money if Branson were buying all the tickets?
That might be possible if the tickets were cheaper than other airlines (they aren't), or if he were buying, say, half the seats and the planes were flying empty (our average load factor is around 80%).
So really, you are full of BS.
Look, I work there, and myself and all the rest of us know that things don't look good. But let's try to stick to reality and leave fantasy to folks like Tolkein. OK?
Its a matter of degree. He isn't doing it on every seat every flight, or even half the seats on every flight. But he's doing it as a way to "legally" launder his dirty foreign money into his "American" company. 5 seats here, 10 seats there, and not on every flight but at the end of the year it really adds up. But the majority of his dirty foreign money is coming from hand picked "US investors" with "US money" locking in double digit bonded non defaultable returns backed by his 100% foreign money. And Gandalf didn't tell me that. A very high level VP (or higher) at a major US airline did. They are on to him but the DOJ is under massive pressure to look the other way as long as he has a thread of pseudo-legality to point to and as long as he keeps the amounts in question below a certain point of public outcry.