Why airline passengers owe a debt of gratitude to Branson and Clark

Perhaps you were not even born in 1983, let alone flying long haul. But take it from me: the aviation landscape four decades ago was lousy.

The previous year, Freddie Laker had gone bust, his Skytrain challenge failing to survive against the might of the entrenched airlines. Those carriers were simultaneously extremely expensive relative to average wages and generally abysmal in the service they provided. With cosy arrangements instead of free competition, they simply didn’t need to be good.

Forget any notion you might have about early 1980s aviation being glamorous. Today’s long-haul traveller is far better off, enjoying mostly great service at much lower relative prices. And British travellers owe a lot of that improvement to two knighted British aviation entrepreneurs who built airlines from nothing over the past four decades.

Richard Branson started Virgin Atlantic in 1984; a year later, Tim Clark was part of the team that founded Emirates – which, 38 years on, he still heads up as president.

Both have helped to transform long-haul aviation. Virgin Atlantic set the pace for more comfort, better inflight entertainment and the sheer celebration of travel. Emirates shows how a globe-girdling hub can bring the world closer and deliver great experiences.

Each of their leaders has given me a more-than-usually personal view of the airlines they created.

I met Richard Branson, now 73, at London Heathrow last week. He was preparing to fly to New York JFK on the first-ever transatlantic passenger flight powered by sustainable aviation fuel.

“I have my daughter standing over there,” he said. “I remember her sitting on my lap, 40 years ago when we flew the inaugural flight.

“That was a magical day, although terrifying. Nobody thought we would last the year – and we very nearly didn’t last the year. Definitely, nobody thought we’d last 40 years.”

Virgin Atlantic survived by innovation: working at being better than much larger rivals, principally British Airways.

Emirates began in a very different way. Until the mid-1980s, its “national carrier” was Gulf Air, which fulfilled that role for a number of states in the region. Then Gulf Air started cutting services to Dubai. The royal family promptly decided to launch a new airline, based at the emirate’s then-modest airport. They brought in Tim Clark, a respected route planner at…