Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic sub-orbital flight plan has slipped further. It will not resume flights on its VSS Unity spaceplane until Q2 2023. Virgin says its upgrades to its SpaceShipTwo aircraft are taking longer than expected. It had previously stated that commercial flights would take place during Q1 2023.

Virgin’s main task is work on the central wing of the aircraft, not helped by restricted room at the Mojave Desert facility along with staffing shortages.

Virgin says it has pre-sold more than 800 seats on its aircraft and will start carrying these passengers beginning in Q4 2023.

Virgin said it suffered a net loss of $111 million and negative adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation of $93 million in Q2. Those losses were much higher than the same period in 2021, which Virgin said was from higher R&D costs as it starts development of the new Delta-class aircraft.

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Tags: Sir Richard Branson, SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic