VIRGIN

Let love fly

Creative Director Michael Dole conceived Let Love Fly for Virgin Australia — an idea born from the brand's purpose, Champions of Better, and from the simplest reading of its point of view: it's better if it's personal. And nothing is more personal than who you love, and the right to stand up and say so.

In 2016, the country had already decided. Most Australians believed in marriage equality. The law just hadn't caught up — and in the gap between what the people believed and what the parliament allowed, couples kept waiting. Whole lives kept waiting. The idea began with a refusal to accept that gap as someone else's problem: if the law wouldn't let love marry on Australian soil, an airline was uniquely placed to leave Australian soil.

So the sky became the loophole, and the loophole became a sanctuary. Couples invited aboard, the ceremony beginning the moment the aircraft crossed into international skies — where the waiting ended at altitude, vows exchanged above the country that couldn't yet hear them, then the plane turning for home with something the ground refused to give.

Their stories told first: three couples, three lives, three different roads to the same aisle — because no two loves are the same, and every one of them had earned the telling. And around them, the airline itself in colour — rainbow on the tail, rainbow at the collar of every crew member who chose to wear it, and the invitation extended to Virgin's own people in same-sex relationships to marry on board. An airline famous for its people, offering its people the same better it offered everyone else.

Let Love Fly was conceived in December 2016. Eleven months later, Australia said yes, and the law followed. The idea never needed to leave the ground — which is the only way an idea like this ever wants to end. It existed to be made unnecessary. The country made it so.

When the ground won't let love stand, let love fly.