Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson was inducted into the Flight Path Aviation Walk of Fame Wednesday in a ceremony on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport.
“I’ve been fascinated by flight ever since I was a little boy looking up to the skies,” Branson said. “I’ve had the privilege of meeting and often working with many of the geniuses of flight, the inventors, the adventurers, the daredevils and the dreamers. What they all have in common is the desire to make the world a better place and see it from a different angle.”
Deborah Flint, the CEO of Los Angeles World Airports, the city agency that operates LAX, called Branson, “an adventurer, a dynamic businessman, and, what I believe, is one of the original disrupter throughout industries.”
In addition to founding the three airlines that bear the Virgin name, Branson, 67, holds records in long-distance ballooning.
Los Angeles International Airport is the world’s only airport served by all three Virgin airlines.
Branson is the 54th inductee to the Walk of Fame, which was created in 1995 and features plaques along Sepulveda Boulevard in Westchester, just north of the airport.