Virgin America

Virgin America Inc. was a low-cost airline headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Burlingame, California. It primarily focused on operating low-fare, higher-quality service between cities on the West Coast of the United States and other major metropolitan areas. It operated both domestic and international flights, with hubs in San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as smaller focus city operations at Love Field in Dallas, Texas, and New York–JFK.

Originally established in 2004, the airline began operations in 2007 as an independent airline company using branding licensed from the United Kingdom–based Virgin Group, which also controls the brand of the Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia airlines. The Alaska Air Group acquired Virgin America in April 2016, at a cost of approximately $4 billion and continued to operate Virgin America under its own name and brand until the airline was fully merged into Alaska Airlines on April 24, 2018.

History

Founding (2004–2007)

In early 2004, Virgin Group announced its intention to found a United States–based, low-fare airline called "Virgin USA". At the time, Virgin USA expected flights to begin by mid 2005. After considering several key areas, the San Francisco Bay Area was chosen as the location of its flight operations center and later as its corporate headquarters. The airline changed its name from "Virgin USA" to "Virgin America" and due to the difficulty in finding U.S. investors willing to gamble on a new airline in an already congested industry, the launch date was pushed back from mid 2005 to early 2006.

Virgin America secured U.S. investors Black Canyon Capital and Cyrus Capital Partners in late 2005.