VIRGIN SHUNS 'OPEN SKIES'

The airline, announcing an order for £1.3billion of Rolls-Royce engines to power its fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners, due for delivery in 2011, said the agreement between the US and the EU did not go far enough.

Branson said: “I think the EU will be willing to break the barriers down and go for a complete open skies. We will just have to wait and see if America will revert to its bad old ways.”

He said he had been looking at a variety of new hubs on the Continent but did not yet have sufficient planes and wanted to see how Open Skies worked out.

His stance contrasts with that of British Airways which has set up a new “airline within an airline” to begin flying between Europe and the US later this year.

Virgin’s chief operating officer Lyell Strambi yesterday labelled Open Skies, designed to liberalise traffic between the two continents, a damp squib, warning air fares would not fall as had been hoped.

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