Virgin Atlantic Helps Passengers Pay Their Fare Share - New Initiative Connects Passengers to Share Airport Taxi Journeys

Virgin Atlantic Helps Passengers Pay Their Fare Share - New Initiative
Connects Passengers to Share Airport Taxi Journeys

SOUTH NORWALK, Conn., Nov. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Virgin Atlantic, one of the
world's leading long haul airlines, today announced a unique initiative which
will help its passengers find other travelers to share taxi rides into city
centers across the world - saving both their wallets and ground carbon
emissions. The Taxi2 website will help match passengers who are on the same
flight or whose flights arrive at a similar time, and are traveling to a
similar part of a city, so they can share the taxi ride.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060927/NYW045LOGO)

Passengers will simply need to log onto http://www.taxi.to and input their
flight and destination details (eg. hotel address) and the website will match
them with a suitable traveling companion. They are then sent the details of
the matched traveler and can decide whether to agree to the match and make
arrangements of where to meet upon their flight arrival. Passengers can then
print off a convenient Taxi2 sign from the website so they can locate each
other at the airport. The system will also match female travelers who only
want female traveling companions. The program is not limited to Virgin
Atlantic customers and passengers on other airlines can share rides as well.

Dee Cooper, Director of Product and Service, Virgin Atlantic, commented:

"We are always looking at ways to help improve our passengers' journeys and
this is a simple initiative which helps them to connect in a clever way. We
expect this scheme to be popular with our passengers."

Ed Maklouf, founder of Taxi2, said:

"We are delighted to be partnering with Virgin Atlantic for this scheme, and
our expectation is that this simple, sensible way of saving money and cutting
down congestion and carbon footprint will become common activity for air
travelers worldwide."

The initiative was born out of Virgin Atlantic's VJAM program, which is an
Open Innovation initiative with NESTA, the UK's National Endowment for
Science, Technology and the Arts (http://www.nesta.org.uk/v-jam/). The
airline recently hosted the VJAM event to find new innovative initiatives,
which its passengers would benefit from. This initiative is just one of many
that came out of the VJAM program, which is focused on co-innovating with
Virgin Atlantic's passengers and blending topics that our customers are
interested in with opportunities that make travel more social. Other VJAM
initiatives will be released over the following months. See
http://www.virginatlantic.com/innovationzone for details.

For further information please contact the Virgin Atlantic Press Office at
(203) 750-2570 or visit www.virginatlantic.com.

About NESTA

NESTA is the largest independent endowment in the UK. Its mission is to
support innovation to drive economic recovery and solve some of the UK's major
social challenges. NESTA is a world leader in its field and is in a unique
position to support and promote innovation through a blend of practical
programmes, policy and research and investment in early-stage companies.
www.nesta.org.uk

SOURCE Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic Airways, U.S. Press Office, +1-203-750-2570