Students hitch ride on Branson's jet to see Obama

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Two Dutch college students hitched a last-minute ride to Washington on the private jet of entrepreneur Richard Branson in the hope of joining the crowds hailing Barack Obama, a Dutch news agency reported.

Branson was a guest speaker at an Amsterdam congress on Tuesday, and participants were able to ask questions by sending text messages from their mobile phones, which were shown on a large screen.

"Will you take along two poor students to Obama?" the students' text message read, to which Branson immediately said yes, ANP agency reported.

It was not immediately clear if they would make the actual inauguration of the president-elect Tuesday, but a spokeswoman for the congress said: "As we speak, they are sitting in the private jet of Richard Branson."

(Reporting by Niclas Mika)