To guest edit Flightglobal may well have been a dream come true for Sir Richard Branson. He had wanted to be a journalist when he was at school in Stowe, so at the tender age of 16 he set up a student magazine.
But yesterday's guest editorship was no child's play.
Providing commentary on the day's new agenda; selecting iconic images for the Image of the Day blog; blogging about industry issues on this blog, answering your questions and choosing a competition winner to fly anywhere on the Virgin network.
During the day, we learned how he has a strong focus on keeping a healthy work/life balance by spending as much free time on his own private island, Necker, near Costa Rica with his family.
On a typical day, he could be spanning a couple of continents with a breakfast meeting in Tokyo, enjoying a business lunch in the South of France, and racing to the UK in time to have afternoon tea with his mother.
As Flightglobal's guest editor he shared his views of the current state of the industry in his own Guest Editor's blog.
He said: "Everything has been thrown at our industry - volatile oil, swine flu, recession, environmental pressure, higher government taxes.
"What next? We're clearly at a tipping point. The next 12 months will determine how our industry looks for the longer-term..."
And he wrote another blog post about the British Airways and American Airlines merger whose "plans to effectively merge are not going according to plan".
Sir Richard as gatekeeper
He chose the lead stories throughout the day and wrote a short sentence justifying his decisions.
His lead story choices, unsurprisingly, reflected his interests in the airline industry. Airline CEOs will have logged on to Flightglobal in the morning to find that IATA announced, at its AGM in
He was clearly worried but while director-general and CEO Giovanni Bisignani might be a "merchant of doom and gloom... he's a good barometer of when recovery comes."
He lead the news agenda in the afternoon with news that Virgin Nigeria will lose the Virgin brand next month.
In the story Virgin Atlantic says it "always intended" to pull out from the Nigerian carrier within about five years, and last week brought technical co-operation to a close, essentially ending its day-to-day participation in Virgin Nigeria's operations.
Sir Richard said that "Virgin Nigeria had been a breath of fresh air in the Nigerian aviation industry".
A final lead for the day showed Sir Richard's deep sadness over the tragedy of the Air France A330 accident last week. Pictures were released showing search team divers retrieving the aircraft's vertical tailfin.
Q & A competition
Sir Richard answered a handful of the best questions you sent in and selected a question by Jean-Baptiste Betrand about the "real heroes of aviaiton" as his favourite out of the hundreds submitted.
Congratulations to Jean-Baptiste who wins a return flight anywhere in the Virgin network.
You saw it here first
As part of Virgin Atlantic's 25 year anniversary, the airline produced a short video featuring some of the highlights and iconic imagery that has marked Virgin Atlantic's colourful history. Sir Richard gave this video to Flightglobal as an exclusive so you saw it here first.
Maiden Voyager - maiden commercial flight
He chose an image for the Image of the Day blog of himself with a collection of celebrities on the steps up to the airline's first Boeing 747 named Maiden Voyager before it took off for Newark on 22 June 1984.
See more images of Sir Richard in the Virgin Atlantic gallery and see how Flight reported on Virgin in the archives.
Sadly, I didn't get a day off, nor was I running Virgin Atlantic (we didn't agree on a jobswap) so I spent most of the day strategising with our troops in preparation for the next week's 100th Paris Air Show.
on June 13, 2009 8:58 PM | Reply
Necker Island is NOT near to Costa Rica! It's in the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. Not very good fact checking on your part.
on June 14, 2009 10:08 PM | Reply
His Island is near Puero Rico, NOT Costa Rica!!
on June 25, 2009 11:01 AM | Reply
Puerto Rico, you're quite correct. Here's a map: http://tinyurl.com/mgzutj