Richard Branson has accused so-called foolish leaders of triggering conflicts that are directly responsible for soaring airfares, in what appeared to be a clear reference to the ongoing tensions between the United States, Israel, and Iran.<\/p>\n
Branson, who founded the Virgin Group, said there was no justification for the war. He pointed to a nuclear agreement previously negotiated by former President Barack Obama and European governments, arguing it had been effective and did not need to be abandoned. The conflict, he said, has resulted in much higher oil prices globally and contributed to inflation.<\/p>\n
Middle East tensions have disrupted the production and transportation of millions of barrels of oil daily, causing jet fuel costs to more than triple. The European benchmark price for aviation fuel had been hovering around $800 per tonne before spiking to over $1,800 in April. It has since dropped to approximately $1,450.<\/p>\n
Virgin Atlantic responded by adding a fuel surcharge to ticket prices. Corneel Koster, the airline’s chief executive, told the BBC that at current fuel price levels, surcharges were absolutely required. He added that it was hard to be optimistic about the situation in the Middle East at this moment. The surcharge Virgin introduced added \u00a350 to an economy class fare, \u00a3180 to premium and \u00a3360 to business class.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly defended the conflict as necessary for long-term peace and security. The BBC has contacted the White House for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Virgin founder Richard Branson says the US-Israel conflict with Iran has driven jet fuel costs to triple, forcing airlines to add steep surcharges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1678,39,1679,33,874,1680,1681,10],"class_list":["post-733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-aviation","tag-breaking","tag-fuel-prices","tag-middle-east","tag-oil-prices","tag-richard-branson","tag-virgin-atlantic","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}