To anyone who's posted anti-Virgin tweets recently. Here’s a small thread to quash some inaccuracies.

This is bigger than ‘hate’ for Branson. Thousands of Virgin Atlantic employees in the UK contribute to HMRC as detailed below. VAA's contribution to the UK economy is monumental

VAA award multi million pound contracts to the UK supply chain, creating jobs outside VAA in industries like engineering/catering. All these employees contribute tax/NI too. The financial contribution and BENEFIT of Virgin Atlantic to HMRC is worth a hundreds of millions annually

Virgin Atlantic have been at the forefront of repatriation flights, and have been flying in hundreds of thousands of pieces of PPE and supplies to the UK for our wonderful NHS, weekly. The crews on these flights are all volunteers, doing everything possible to help.

Virgin Atlantic operate over 23,000 flights annually, carry over 220,000 tonnes of cargo (this represents approximately 25% of all long haul air cargo capacity to the UK - a lifeline for for British food and pharmaceutical industries).

Virgin Atlantic and their employees have voluntarily taken dramatic steps to reduce cost to help the airline they love - by taking pay cuts, going on unpaid leave, and reducing all other costs where possible. Richard has invested £250M into Virgin group in the short term too.

Surrounding the phrase 'Bailout'; Virgin Atlantic aren't asking for free money - but a LOAN that'll be repaid on commercial terms. Aside from this, the loan, which secures the airline's future, will result in annual tax/NI benefits worth levels more than the loan itself!

If your argument is 'he sued the NHS' then read these facts. Virgin Care did NOT want this to be settled financially, but by way of reassessing contract award. Financial settlement was enforced by other parties and the damages were reinvested into the NHS https://virgincare.co.uk/blog/why-its-wrong-to-say-we-sued-the-nhs-because-we-lost-a-contract-in-surrey/

Boycotting VAA or advocating their failure has little effect on Richard Branson, but will have a monumentally negative impact to thousands of VAA employees in the UK who love working, are dedicated, and provide much needed competition for UK industry that benefits the consumer.

This competition results in cheaper travel, better choice, and it forces every company to innovate and develop. The VAA/BA competition hugely benefits the consumer, and losing any company would be catastrophic for the consumer, the industry, and all of its employees.

Please consider the impact of what you say, and look at the big picture. I'd never ever ever wish failure on any company.

I hope my colleagues at other airlines across the UK appreciate the benefit of Virgin Atlantic to this industry, and to the UK's economy. Thanks for reading