Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic has crashed back into the red with a £127 million pre-tax loss for 2025, with the long-haul carrier warning corporate travel buyers to brace for prolonged disruption as the Gulf war drives jet fuel costs to record highs and Donald Trump’s trade tariffs continue to crimp transatlantic demand.
The figures, contained in the airline’s latest filings, reverse a modest £20 million profit in 2024 and follow combined losses of £326 million across 2022 and 2023. The slide back into deficit comes despite revenue ticking up to £3.4 billion, from £3.3 billion a year earlier, and a strengthened cash position of £630 million.
Virgin Atlantic, co-owned by Branson’s Virgin Group and Delta Air Lines of the United States, laid the blame squarely at the door of the White House. The carrier said point-of-sale demand in the US was noticeably weaker than budgeted from the second quarter onwards, after the president’s so-called “liberation day” tariffs rattled American consumers and dampened appetite for premium long-haul travel.
The outlook for 2026, it cautioned, was now “impossible” to predict with confidence following American strikes on Iran and the subsequent constraints on the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which roughly half of Europe’s jet fuel imports flow.
The airline disclosed that it is typically only 50 per cent hedged on its fuel one year out, leaving it heavily exposed to the spot market just as prices have spiked. By contrast, IAG, the parent of British Airways, has locked in 70 per cent of its anticipated fuel needs for the remainder of 2026, a gap that has pushed BA business class fares higher and lifted IAG’s fuel bill towards €9 billion, but cushioned its margins against the shock.
According to the IATA Jet Fuel Price Monitor, the global benchmark has more than doubled since US-Israeli action against Iran began in late February, peaking close to $200 a barrel before easing modestly. That spike has already triggered fare rises, capacity cuts and acute supply pressure across the airline sector.
In his final report before stepping down as chairman, Peter Norris told shareholders that budgets and forecasts to the end of the decade had been “upended” by the hostilities.
“Long-haul aviation is an industry particularly exposed to geopolitical shocks and supply chain disruption,” Norris wrote. “These always have a direct and immediate effect on near-term operating conditions and often longer-term effects on consumer confidence and therefore demand.”
He added that the industry had “sustained a very large price shock in fuel, its major input cost, quite apart from direct effects on traffic,” warning that damage to Gulf energy infrastructure was likely to prevent a full resumption of normal supply “for a lengthy period.” All of Virgin Atlantic’s operations, he confirmed, had been re-planned for the remainder of the year to reflect the new macro reality. The full set of figures is available in the carrier’s 2025 Annual Report.
The results land amid a near-complete refresh of the airline’s senior leadership. Norris, 71, also chairman of Virgin Group and, more than three decades ago, the executive in charge at Barings Bank when it collapsed during the Nick Leeson trading scandal, has stepped down after 14 years in the post. He is succeeded by Josh Bayliss, 53, who has spent the last 15 years as chief executive of Virgin Group.
At the executive level, Shai Weiss, 58, departed at the turn of the year after seven years as chief executive. His replacement is Corneel Koster, 54, the former chief customer officer who returned to the carrier in 2019 after an earlier stint and is now charged with steering it through one of the toughest trading environments in its history.
The reshuffle comes only months after Virgin Atlantic raised a $745 million debt facility from Apollo against its highly prized Heathrow slot portfolio, a deal designed to fund fleet upgrades and pay down debt that now looks considerably more prescient given the cash strain bearing down on the sector.
For business travel buyers, the message from Virgin Atlantic’s filings is sobering: with hedging cover thinner than its main rival, US point-of-sale demand under pressure and the Gulf crisis showing no sign of resolution, premium long-haul fares are unlikely to soften any time soon.