Virgin Orbit’s outgoing COO Tony Gingiss had some tough words for his fellow company leaders in a company-wide email obtained by news channel CNBC. The New York NASDAQ index is also suspending the company’s stock listing, effective April 13th.

Although Gingiss doesn’t name CEO Dan Hart by name in his memo, or main backer Sir Richard Branson, he tells staff that they have not heard from the person who “should be [apologising].”

“You deserved better than this! You have been part of something audacious, challenging, and fulfilling [but] … You simply did not have the leadership or opportunity to demonstrate to the world what you can fully do and how this product could be an enduring force in the market,” his email stated.

“I’m sorry that I was not able to convince our leader and board to take a different path to give us more time to figure things out,” he said.

His email continued: “Like many of you, today is my last day at Virgin Orbit. The last 26 months I spent as your COO have a lot [of] positives for me including; learning how we build our rocket, working with a multi-talented team to do so, successfully launching 3 rockets and delivering our Customers into orbit, making new friends and colleagues, and experiencing a challenging and team-building Spaceport Cornwall first launch campaign to name a few. Thank you for everything you gave to me personally and to the dream of Virgin Orbit. I appreciate it and, I appreciate you! That said, we are at a crossroads.”

“You simply did not have the leadership or opportunity to demonstrate to the world what you can fully do and how this product could be an enduring force in the market,” Gingiss concluded.

Gingiss is one of 675 staff laid off ahead of the company’s move into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Other posts by Chris Forrester:

1. Optimism under threat at SES
2. Rivada visits Terran Orbital’s manufacturing HQ
3. Avanti wins spectrum debt obligation case
4. SpaceX breaks records for re-use launchers
5. IRIS2 already in trouble?
6. Intelsat contemplates next steps
7. SpaceX: 2.7m customers and $180bn value
8. Boeing, Virgin Galactic in court battle
9. Jupiter-3 a changemaker

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Tags: chapter 11, Sir Richard Branson, Spaceport, virgin, Virgin Orbit