Virgin America
Virgin America is an American airline based in Burlingame and base at the San Francisco airport.
History
In the spring of 2004, the Virgin Group 's intention announced to establish a new low-cost airline for long haul flights based in the United States. Their name should be and the United States Virgin flight operations to start in mid 2005. As a location for a home base and later the headquarters of the San Francisco Bay Area has been selected.
Due to difficulties, to participate in a new airline -ready U.S. investors to find the beginning of flight operations in mid-2005 to the spring of 2006 had to be postponed. The end of 2005 in the meantime renamed Virgin America company had accumulated enough capital and applied for the necessary permits at the United States Department of Transportation ( DOT short ). The subsequent review process was carried out under the great debates of opponents and supporters of the new airline. The cities and representatives of the States of California and New York supported the society. The main opposition came from the Air Line Pilots Association and other airlines, led by Continental Airlines. The main argument of the opposition was that the capital shares were not under the control of U.S. investors. These reasons were accepted by the DOT on 27 December 2006. In order to obtain the necessary permits for flight operations, Virgin America subsequently changed its corporate structure and proposed to hand over the voting shares in an audited by DOT Trust and occupy only two of the eight Virgin America supervisory boards from the ranks of the Virgin Group. Even the waiver of the brand name Virgin was in question. After further promised reforms of the corporate structure, the DOT issued on 20 March 2007, received approval for flight operations.
Ticket sales from Virgin America began in July 2007. On August 8, 2007, two years later than planned, finally began flight operations with non-stop scheduled flights from San Francisco and Los Angeles on the West Coast to New York City on the East Coast of the USA. The network has since been expanded gradually, but is still mainly focused on traffic from coast to coast.
On January 23, 2012 it was announced that the airline has an Airbus A320 -200 with the identifier N845VA after the 2011 deceased co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs named. On the fuselage of the aircraft the quote " Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish " was (German: Stay hungry, remains childish ), from a speech that Jobs had held prior graduates of Stanford University in 2005, attached.
Ownership
Virgin America is a U.S. airline, despite the expansion by British entrepreneur Richard Branson. According to U.S. law foreign ownership of a U.S. airline shall not be more than 25%. VAI Partners LLC, a resident of Delaware and two investment undertakings, according owned by 75 % of the shares and represents 2/3 of the persons entitled to vote on the Board. The remaining 25 % are owned by the Virgin Group, which also owns the license for the trademark Virgin.
Destinations
As of Summer 2013 combines Virgin America Boston, Fort Lauderdale, New York City, Orlando and Washington DC on the east coast of the USA with Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle on the west coast. Other U.S. destinations include Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas and Las Vegas and Cancun and Los Cabos in Mexico. More meantime set goals were Orange County and Toronto.
Fleet
As of August 2013 the fleet of Virgin America consists of 53 aircraft:
Many aircraft Virgin America are equipped with a system for Internet use on board of the provider Gogo, which a fee is possible during a flight, currently only within the United States, surfing the Web.