Virgin Atlantic’s chairman Peter Norris has written to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson stating that the country’s airline industry needs emergency government support worth 7.5 billion pounds to avoid the risk of losing tens of thousands of jobs.
Sky News’ sources claim that Peter Norris, the chairman of Virgin Atlantic Airways, would ask the government to provide airlines with a credit facility to help them finance themselves through a potentially protracted period of negligible revenue.
Mr Norris’s states that the emergency financing, worth between £5bn and £7.5bn across the industry, would be repaid once trading returns to more normal levels.
The trade body IATA has estimated that the airline industry globally could forfeit $113bn in revenue as a result of COVID-19 a figure it may have to increase again at a later date.
