Virgin Galactic to run as a critical infrastructure business during pandemic

Billionaire Richard Branson's space tourism company Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc will keep running as a critical infrastructure business, even as many US states in which it operates have mandated business closures during the coronavirus outbreak.

"We are an aerospace manufacturer with defense and government contracts and therefore categorized as a Critical Infrastructure business," a company spokeswoman told Reuters in an emailed statement.

The company, which aims to offer the first commercial space flight later this year with Branson on board, added that a vast majority of its workforce is working from home.

Virgin Galactic's net losses widened to $73 million in the fourth quarter from $46 million in the year-ago period, it reported in its first financial results as a publicly traded company in February.

Blue Origin, founded by Amazon.com Inc Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, is also racing to be the first to offer suborbital flights to fare-paying thrill seekers.

Virgin Galactic went public after merging in October with Social Capital Hedosophia, the special-purpose acquisition vehicle run by early Facebook Inc executive and venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya.

Separately, Branson is seeking 500 million pounds (P31.51 billion) from the British government to bail out his Virgin Atlantic airline during the virus outbreak.

-reuters-

Delta hit by computer outage, flights delayed worldwide

Delta Air Lines Inc said a "major system-wide network outage" on Monday had delayed flights worldwide and technicians were working to resolve the computer problem as soon as possible.

Flights scheduled for departure were not taking off, but those already in the air were operating normally, Delta said in a statement.

Delta operates 5,000 departures a day and is a member of the SkyTeam alliance alongside airlines including Air France-KLM .

It also partners for transatlantic flights with Virgin Atlantic, which said its flights were operating normally but cautioned that passengers should check tickets in case their flight was due to be operated by Delta as part of a code share agreement.

"Delta experienced a computer outage that has impacted flights scheduled for this morning," said Delta, the world's second largest airline measured by revenue passenger kilometres flown.

"Our systems are down everywhere. Hopefully it won't be much longer," the airline said on Twitter.

The outage was affecting flights globally, a London-based spokeswoman for the airline said.

Passengers stuck in check-in queues in airports across the world, or on board planes waiting to depart took to Twitter to share photos and frustration at the delays.

"1 hr.+ lines @HeathrowAirport for @Delta due to system outage," tweeted user @MITJAKE with a picture of passengers waiting to check in.

The glitch follows several high-profile computer problems faced by U.S. airlines in recent months.

Budget carrier Southwest Airlines Co last month had to halt departures after a technical outage, while American Airlines had to suspend flights from three of its hubs last September after technical problems.

Industry consultants say airlines face an increasing risk from computer disruptions as they automate more of their operations, distribute boarding passes on smartphones and outfit their planes with Wifi.

(Reporting by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru and Victoria Bryan in Berlin; additional reporting by Sarah Young in London; editing by Gopakumar Warrier and Jason Neely)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com