Ah, it seems like only a decade and a half or so ago that Virgin Atlantic and British Airways were engaged in one of the ugliest public battles the airline industry had seen. And now, well, they are admitting to collusion on a fuel surcharge price-fixing scheme. How time flies.

Back in 1991, the bad blood between these two leaders in British air travel was already boiling. Virgin Atlantic, young upstarts that they were, moved their center of operations from Heathrow to Gatwick, throwing down the proverbial gauntlet and challenging BA directly. However, as The BBC reported, 1992 and 1993 was when things turned really ugly. Virgin Atlantic accused British Airways of stealing its customer list and tampering with confidential company files. Lovable billionaire Richard Branson even accused BA’s PR department of defaming him and his company in the press. BA denied, but eventually they had to cough up $3M; with $500,000 going directly to Branson.

Fast forward to 2007, and as reported by MSNBC and the Financial Times, it seems these two companies worked together to bilk the traveling public out of their hard earned cash by fixing fuel surcharge rates. It should be noted that there is very little regulation when it comes to fuel surcharges, and that United and American are facing the same charges. Qantas has also come forward to admit that they were “likely” participants in price fixing, as well. (Keep an eye out for my upcoming in depth look at fuel surcharges and other methods airlines use to obfuscate the pricing process).

But for now, back to VS and BA. Before you think they’ve gone all lovey dovey, you should know that Virgin Atlantic blew the whistle before British Airways. That means that while British Airways is substantially fined for this, Virgin Atlantic will only have to suffer the bad PR. Somewhere, perhaps in a hot air balloon high above the Atlantic, Richard Branson might just be laughing.