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Richard Branson’s company, Virgin, last flew to Toronto’s Pearson airport in 2014
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By Andre Ramshaw , Postmedia News
Published Apr 21, 2025
Last updated 12hours ago
5 minute read
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With Virgin Atlantic returning to Toronto after a 10-year absence, first-time passengers will surely thrill to Canada’s vast expanses as they soar across the ocean from congested London. Perhaps less known to neophytes, they will also be cruising over a vast graveyard, figuratively speaking, of failed transatlantic carriers.
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Virgin Atlantic’s return to Canada stirs ghosts of airlines past Back to video
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Richard Branson’s Virgin last flew to Toronto’s Pearson in 2014 after a brief Vancouver foray from 2012 to 2014.
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Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, it will begin direct flights between London Heathrow and Toronto Pearson on March 30 and has been making all the right noises about its return to this country.
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“At Virgin Atlantic we always think there’s a spot for us,” spokesman Simon Hawkins told travelweek.ca. “We know there is a dominant carrier. There’s Air Canada, and there’s also British Airways and Transat. We think there’s space in there for us. We have strong appeal and we offer something unique.”
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Juha Jarvinen, Virgin Atlantic’s chief commercial officer, predicted “huge opportunities to connect friends, relatives and businesses,” while Hawkins declared Virgin is “excited” about building “more of a footprint in Canada,” adding — perhaps with an eye on the ghosts of carriers past — “it’s very early days.”
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Virgin’s Canadian comeback is to be welcomed, not least because it is an excuse to recall — fondly for some, furiously for others — the upstarts who’ve flown and foundered on the Canada-U. K. route, their contrails lingering mostly among online aviation geeks and collectors of aircraft ephemera.
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Canadians hungry for cheap flights to catch up with family and friends across the pond will recognize this rollcall: Skyservice, Canada 3000, Zoom, Flyglobespan, Royal.
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I’ve flown all of them, there may be others, and each started out with the best of intentions.
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The world is full of failed carriers, the most obvious being Pan Am, which did more to democratize and glamorize air travel than any of its competitors.
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Canada has seen its share of big-beast casualties — Wardair, CPAir, Canadian Airlines — and this country is notoriously turbulent for low-cost entrants with its high taxes, steep airport improvement and landing fees, and thinly spread population. Let’s not even mention Roots Air, which lasted scarcely a month.
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Given Canadians’ strong links to Britain, the transatlantic route has generally been a lucrative exception for aviation entrepreneurs with deep pockets and a strong stomach for risk.
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Charter services to London, Manchester, Glasgow and other secondary airports in the U.K. are routinely packed, with many flyers willing to forgo legroom and frills for rock-bottom ticket prices.
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Zoom Airlines (2002-2008), did much to pioneer this concept for Canadians. Founded by Scottish brothers Hugh and John Boyle, the Ottawa-based low-cost carrier offered year-round scheduled services to Europe but was accused of expanding too fast, too soon amid a jet-fuel bill that had doubled from 2002 to 2006.
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Passengers on European budget airlines such as Ryanair and easyJet are inured to forking out extra fees for everything from checked suitcases to cappuccinos; Zoom got bargain-loving Canadians on board but ultimately could not survive its crushing debts. It was reportedly burning through $1 million a day by 2006.
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Scottish airline Flyglobespan (2002-2009), took another leaf from the cheapskate Euro PlayBook by avoiding Canada’s expensive hubs — here’s looking at you, Pearson — and flying instead to John C. Munro Airport in Hamilton, 60-km west of Toronto. In the U.K., it touched down at minor terminals including Doncaster-Sheffield (now closed) in northern England.
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Landing at secondary airports is common in Europe, where frustrated passengers often find their vacation destination is actually a two-hour bus journey away. With one-way fares from as little as $20, however, most are willing to grumble but acquiesce.
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With debts approaching $70 million, Flyglobespan was forced to pull the plug on Dec. 16, 2009, stranding roughly 4,000 angry passengers abroad.
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One of the biggest names in low-cost transatlantic travel was Canada 3000 (1988-2001). After swallowing Montreal-based Royal Airlines (1991-2001), which flew to London Gatwick and Manchester, it grew to become the largest charter airline in the world, serving 90-plus destinations, and was second in size only to Air Canada in its home market.
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With more than 50 aircraft in its fleet and growing passenger demand, Canada 3000’s future looked assured. But the aviation devastation wrought by 9/11 and the $84-million takeover of Royal, considered a “massive mistake” by some analysts, brought the airline, also based in Montreal, crashing back to earth.
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More than 140,000 travellers who had booked to fly in the week after its sudden demise on Nov. 9, 2001, were left marooned, and nearly 5,000 employees lost their jobs.
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Toronto-based charter airline Skyservice (1986-2010), lasted longer than many of its competitors. Serving mostly sun destinations, its notable for introducing the first Airbus A330 to North American skies.
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Amid the carnage, Air Transat has remained standing. Founded in 1986, it operates scheduled and charter flights and serves London and Manchester from Calgary, Toronto and Montreal.
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Icelandic discounter Play Air joined the fray two years ago, offering cheap seats from London (via a stopover in Reykjavik), to Hamilton, but has announced it’s pulling out of the Ontario city at the end of April, citing a “strategic shift” in its business plan and a “greater emphasis on leisure destinations in southern Europe.”
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Sadly, air travel has become an increasingly amorphous experience over the past 30 years, with little now separating the major carriers from the discounters in terms of service and perks. For most of us shlepping across the Atlantic, the departed airlines conjure at best wry recollections of garish liveries (Zoom’s electric-blue comes to mind), knee-knocking seating arrangements and obscure airfields (disembarking on to an old Royal Air Force base in Exeter, western England, that helped win the Battle of Britain was my favourite.)
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It’s the bargains that remain top of mind for most, but the margins for operators are often painfully thin.
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“If you look at history for the past 30 years, other than WestJet there have not been that many successful ventures,” noted transport professor Jacques Roy, in an interview with The Canadian Press.
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Or, as Richard Branson and others have so succinctly summarized it: “If you want to be a millionaire, start with a billion dollars and then launch a new airline.”
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