Virgin Galactic plans to soar past the Covid troubles burdening the aviation industry with an audacious financial plan

Sir Richard Branson has a plan to repair Virgin Atlantic’s money woes. The airline is exploring a possible listing on the London stock market. It has also reopened ticket sales for upcoming space flights.

The starting price for a seat aboard a Virgin Galactic flight on the ‘SpaceShipTwo’ costs a whopping $450 thousand dollars, far from the “modest premium” that CEO Michael Colglazier recently described.

The news of reopening ticket sales came alongside the release of the company’s quarterly financial report. The report revealed a net loss of over $94 million. The company has been in the red every quarter since going public in 2019.

What does a flight aboard SpaceShipTwo cost?

The company will offer three booking options; single-seat reservations, multi-seat reservations and an option to buy out all six seats on a given flight.

Colglazier also said that the company will offer seats for “research and professional astronaut training” priced at $600,000 each.

The total experience runs for approximately an hour; including a mere few minutes of weightlessness and views of earth in what the US government considers to be space.

Who can buy a Virgin Galactic flight?

Virgin Atlantic will offer the tickets to a list of “early hand raisers” before opening the spots to the public. The list in question is the “Spacefarer Community”, which has a $1000 deposit joining fee. The group has about 1000 members who have paid the deposit.

The company will also raffle off two seats to people who donated to Space For Humanity; a nonprofit working towards democratising space.

However, any new buyers will need to wait for their turn behind a pretty long list of people waiting for their chance to go to space. Almost 600 people already purchased a ticket for between $200,000 and $250,000 nearly a decade ago.

The news follows the Virgin Galactic completing its first fully crewed flight to the edge of space last month.