The Virgin effect

Reuters

MAN OF POWER: Sir Richard Branson does things differently - as his empire of planes, trains and music can attest.

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The Virgin name criss-crosses the globe and is often in your face, but it's not until I attended a press conference earlier this year with Sir Richard Branson presiding that I realised the power that one man can generate by just doing things differently.

Ostensibly, he could have issued a statement that a Virgin Boeing 747 was going to fly from Heathrow to Amsterdam with one engine burning biofuel, a world first.

Spare the paltry thought - this was a pressarama that went on for two days, from a media dinner the night before to a gathering of hundreds of people and cameras inside a Heathrow Airport hangar, to hanging on every word from Sir Richard Branson, on a platform with the magical bio 747 behind him.

The partners were there - Boeing executives, their chief pilot, GE Aviation and Imperium Renewables, and the man himself doing what he does best - selling ideas and being listened to - it seemed compulsory.

We had all been softened up with food and wine, there were soccer tables for any who had the urge, and several women giving shoulder and neck massages to anybody who was not already convinced that this was different and feel-good.

Several people spoke, but it was the Branson man they all wanted to hear.

Sir Richard obliged in volumes, telling us all about the biofuel, made from a blend of coconut oil from the Philippines and babassu nut oil from Brazil, and answering all questions seriously, even silly ones.

Someone among us had actually calculated that to run the world's airlines on such fuel would require great slabs of the planet being used to grow coconut and babassu trees.

It was calmly pointed out to him that other, more sustainable fuels could and would be developed and we would not all be wallowing in coconuts and that other stuff just so greenie jetsetters could indulge themselves.

Having soothed the masses, Sir Richard then moved around to the front of the plane to do it all again for diehard television people, who perhaps didn't get it the first time.

What a show. But then the whole Virgin Group seems to roll along with the same gusto - planes, trains, music, rail, resorts ad infinitum.

"Upgrade", that magic word to all airline passengers, was applied part of the way on my Virgin Atlantic flights from Sydney to London and return.

It's pretty upper class to have your own bed and virtual living capsule, and eat and drink when you feel like it, and the club lounges in both Hong Kong and Heathrow are your own mansions in between.

First class on a Virgin train will cost comparatively less and is definitely the way to go from London to Glasgow, unless you are in some desperate hurry.

I was glad of the time to see the UK countryside, the villages, canals, canal boats, farms and animals and catch a few familiar nameplates as we whistled through stations.

For someone who spends a lot or time on trains, I found it a really relaxing way to go, even though there were no soccer tables and masseurs.

But there was tea on offer, about every 20 minutes.

This is a nation that is driven by tea but sadly, it will not produce biofuel or Sir Richard Branson would already have done it.

Visit: http://www.virginatlantic.com

* The writer travelled to Britain courtesy of VisitBritain and Virgin Atlantic Airways.

- AAP