Sir Richard Branson's Focus on the Globe
Thursday, November 19, 2009SUSIE GHARIB: Sir Richard Branson is a believer when it comes to the economy. The founder and chairman of the Virgin Group has reason to be. Branson says his airlines are doing much better than their U.S. competition. Jeff Yastine sat down recently with the billionaire entrepreneur and began by asking a simple question. How's business?
SIR RICHARD BRANSON, FOUNDER & CHMN., VIRGIN GROUP COMPANIES: Well, I wouldn't say it's been the best year ever. But I think because the various Virgin airlines is a good quality airlines, we haven't suffered like the really major airlines. And an airline like Virgin America here in the states has actually done remarkably well, you know, in the downturn. Virgin Atlantic that relies quite heavily on the business market, maybe slightly less so.
JEFF YASTINE, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Are you seeing areas where perhaps, business is better or improving to any degree?
BRANSON: The last four months has definitely been quite a dramatic pickup, throughout all our airlines and so the airlines are full. Yields are still low, (INAUDIBLE) tremendous time for the traveling public to travel. But definitely a lot more people are back flying again.
YASTINE: Global climate change and reducing carbon emissions is one of your passions. How does the airline industry reduce its carbon footprint?
BRANSON: Well, the Virgin Group has done is we said that we'll take 100 percent of all the profits we make from our airline businesses and we'll invest them in trying to come up with alternative clean fuels. Now that would be obviously the best way of dealing with the problem. In the meantime, we've been urging the aircraft manufacturers to try to produce lighter blends. You know, one of the problems is that the 787 that Boeing had produced which is lighter has been horribly delayed with technical issues. But we're trying to get the airline manufacturers to hurry up and produce much lighter planes, hopefully all carbon composite planes which will be very much lighter. And that will -- that would save dramatically on fuel in the short-term.
YASTINE: Some have talked about instituting some sort of a tax on tickets that air travelers would pay. Do you have a position on that?
BRANSON: I think as long as it's a uniform tax on a global basis and all that money from that tax goes towards tackling climate change, we wouldn't object to that.
YASTINE: What is your sense about whether we'll see in the United States some sort of binding carbon emissions law that carbon output will be regulated to some degree within the United States?
BRANSON: I very much hope that America participates in the Copenhagen talks and that an outcome comes from the Copenhagen talks in December. I mean you know it's beginning to look a bit worrying. But hopefully at least the Copenhagen talks can get us to a stage where very soon thereafter a conclusive agreement can be reached.
YASTINE: Some people say that if we see carbon emissions regulated in this country, it will cost jobs, perhaps cost certain industries. What do you say to those people?
BRANSON: Look, enormous amounts of jobs are going to be created from the green revolution. It stops you sending all this money abroad to the Middle East and other countries. You keep all that money within America and you create, you know, hundreds of thousands of jobs. And that's -- that is what you should be doing. And you know, yes, you know, I mean the airline industry may, you know, have a little bit of an extra tax on it but we will take it on the chin. Fuel prices go up $40 anyway. They have done in the last you know three months. We have had to put up with it. So you know, so it's not going to make an enormous difference.
GHARIB: You can watch Jeff's entire interview with Sir Richard Branson on our web site, NBR on pbs.org.
