Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. (operating as Virgin Atlantic) is a British airline owned by Richard Branson's Virgin Group (51%) and Singapore Airlines (49%). It is headquartered in Crawley, West Sussex, England, near London Gatwick Airport. It operates between the United Kingdom and North America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia from main bases at London Heathrow and London Gatwick. Virgin has a smaller base at Manchester Airport. The company holds a United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority Type A Operating Licence to carry passengers, cargo, and mail on aircraft with 20 or more seats. In the year to February 2009, Virgin Atlantic carried 5.77 million passengers and made an annual profit of £68.4 million on turnover of £2,580 million. Randolph Fields, an American-born lawyer, and Alan Hellary, a former chief pilot for Laker Airways, set up British Atlantic Airways as a successor to Laker Airways. Fields got the idea of an airline from London to the Falkland Islands in June 1982, when the Falklands War had just finished and there was need for a service. Fields needed expertise and contacted Alan Hellary, Laker Airways' former chief pilot, who had thought about establishing a regular, commercial service to the Falklands at the same time. Hellary was in contact with colleagues out of work following the collapse of Laker Airways and they worked on the idea. However the short runway at Port Stanley and the time to improve it made the scheme unviable, so the idea of the Falklands service was dropped. Instead, Hellary and Fields tried to secure a licence from London Gatwick to JFK Airport in New York. A three-day inquiry in May 1983 rejected it after British Airways, British Caledonian and BAA objected. Hellary and Fields applied for a licence between Gatwick and Newark Liberty International Airport, outside New York. It was planned that British Atlantic Airways would use a 380-seat DC-10 to fly to Newark. However, faced with the prospect of direct competition from People Express, a .