Best known as the founder of an Independent British airline called Laker Airways, this Entrepreneur also established the Air Charter, Aviation Traders, and Channel Air Bridge companies.
After being forced to leave the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys, he worked for an aviation company called Short Brothers before joining the Air Transport Auxiliary during the World War II years.
In Laker's honor, Virgin Atlantic named one of its airplane Models "The Spirit of Sir Freddie."
He was married four times -- to Joan Laker (for over twenty-five years); Rose Marie Black (for nearly a decade); Patricia Gates (during the late 1970s and early 1980s) and Jacqueline Harvey (from 1985 until his death in 2006) -- and fathered a total of four children.
United States President Jimmy Carter authorized Laker to conduct a one-year trial of his proposed Skytrain program, which, before it went bankrupt in 1982, allowed passengers to travel directly from London to New York for a cost of between thirty-two and thirty-seven English Pounds.
