Branson really did make this joke — at the Airbus A380 rollout in Toulouse on 18 January 2005, where Virgin Atlantic set out plans for an in-flight casino and 35 private double beds. But the Reuters reporters in the room recorded something looser and hedged: “Since you have gaming and you have private double beds maybe there are two ways of getting lucky on a Virgin plane.” The polished corporate version above — first person, “our passengers,” “at least two ways” — has never been traced to any source, and Wikiquote keeps it off Branson’s page for exactly that reason.
“With the casino and the beds, our passengers will have at least two ways to get lucky on one of our flights” Richard Branson did make this joke — at the Airbus A380 rollout in Toulouse on 18 January 2005 — but not in these words. Reuters reported him saying: "Since you have gaming and you have private double beds maybe there are two ways of getting lucky on a Virgin plane." The polished "With the casino and the beds…" version is unsourced; Wikiquote files it under "Unsourced." — Quotle.info
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In context
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Minimalist
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Provenance
The remark as it was actually reported
Occasion
Airbus A380 rollout, Toulouse, France — 18 January 2005
Reported in
Virgin eyes gyms, casino, double beds on A380 jet
Wire service
Reuters, 18–19 January 2005
Circulating wording
No source located; held on Wikiquote’s talk page as unsourced
Gyms, beauty parlours, private double beds and an in-flight casino will feature on Virgin Atlantic’s giant Airbus A380 planes when it starts flying them in three years’ time, the airline’s half-owner Richard Branson said. “Since you have gaming and you have private double beds maybe there are two ways of getting lucky on a Virgin plane,” entrepreneur Branson told reporters in France.
Reuters, 18 January 2005
This is the documented remark, not the version that circulates. Note the hedge — “maybe there are two ways” — which the popular rewrite removes.
No rights status can honestly be asserted for this wording, because no source for it has been found — it is an undocumented paraphrase, and quotle.info does not claim public-domain status for text it cannot trace. The remark it derives from was spoken in 2005 and reported by Reuters; that wire report is a modern, in-copyright work, so the excerpt above is reproduced here as a short quotation for the purpose of attribution and comment.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Why this wording keeps travelling
Nothing here is a fabrication out of thin air — Branson made the joke, in public, in front of reporters. What has gone wrong is narrower and more common: the sentence in circulation is a rewrite that no source records, passed hand to hand until it looked like a quotation.
✕
The circulating wordingQuote aggregators unsourced
✓The only wording with a contemporaneous source behind it is the one Reuters filed from Toulouse on 18 January 2005 ↗: “Since you have gaming and you have private double beds maybe there are two ways of getting lucky on a Virgin plane.”
Context
The plane that never flew, and the joke that outlived it
On 18 January 2005 Airbus rolled the A380 superjumbo out in Toulouse, and Richard Branson used the occasion to describe what Virgin Atlantic intended to put inside its six of them: a gym, beauty parlours, a gambling area with blackjack and roulette open to economy and business passengers, and 35 private double beds per aircraft. Asked about it, he made the obvious joke — and Reuters wrote it down.
Virgin Atlantic never took delivery. The order was deferred repeatedly and finally cancelled in March 2018, with the deposits rolled into A330 and A350 orders. The casino, the beauty parlour and the double beds were never built. The one-liner, meanwhile, kept flying — and somewhere along the way it got rewritten into a cleaner, more quotable sentence than the one Branson actually said.
The aircraft was cancelled. The joke was rewritten. Only the joke is still in circulation.
How the wording drifted
The reported remark is conversational and hedged: “Since you have gaming and you have private double beds maybe there are two ways of getting lucky on a Virgin plane.” The circulating version drops the hedge, converts it to corporate first person (“our passengers,” “one of our flights”), swaps “gaming” for “the casino,” and firms “maybe there are two ways” into “will have at least two ways.”
Each change makes the line punchier and more printable, which is precisely how quotations drift on their way into aggregator databases. None of the changes is documented in any source, and no book, interview transcript or press release carrying the polished wording has been located.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Born 1950 · British entrepreneur · founder of Virgin Atlantic
Richard Branson, born 18 July 1950, is the English founder of the Virgin Group, which he expanded from a record label into airlines, rail, telecoms and spaceflight. He founded Virgin Atlantic in 1984 and built much of its brand on exactly this register — a slightly cheeky one-liner delivered to reporters, usually while announcing something extravagant. He is also one of the internet’s most-quoted businesspeople, which means a large share of the lines circulating under his name have been smoothed, shortened or invented outright.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Reuters wire report, January 2005
“Virgin eyes gyms, casino, double beds on A380 jet.” Reuters, 18–19 January 2005, filed from Toulouse, France (as published by China Daily, 18 January 2005, and MSNBC, 19 January 2005). Branson’s reported wording: “Since you have gaming and you have private double beds maybe there are two ways of getting lucky on a Virgin plane.” The circulating “With the casino and the beds…” wording is unsourced and is held on Wikiquote’s talk page under “Unsourced.”
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘With the casino and the beds, our passengers will have at least two ways to get lucky on one of our flights’?” Last verified 25 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/with-the-casino-and-the-beds-our-passengers-will-have-at/