Virgin Classics

[Biggles Flies Undone]

Are VS still flying the 747-200? I could have sworn that I saw one landing at LGW last week, but I note that the 'choose your seat' option on their website has been blanked out for the classic.

[Sky Wave]

I believe I read somewhere that they have been wet leased to another company.

[Gerard123]

There's a pic on airliners.net of one flying just 2 days ago.:confused:

[Fried_Chicken]

I understand that Air Atlanta Iceland operate or lease one or two examples to Virgin. These machines are usually used on the Manchester flights

FC

[Matty J]

Virgin still have 2 747-200 series A/C in service which are used on the Manchester-Orlando route.

Their fleet at LGW consists of only 744's.

The 2 742's are G-VBEE (Honey Pie) and G-VSSS (Island Lady) both are in full VS livery!

Hope this helps!

Matt.:ok:

[scroggs]

In fact, Virgin still owns the 5 B747-200s bought from Air New Zealand a few years ago. The two mentioned above are operated on Air Atlanta Europe's AOC, as Virgin no longer has the B742 on their AOC, but they are Virgin's aeroplanes - still (usually) flown by Virgin crews. The other three are in the desert and are unlikely to fly again - and certainly not for Virgin!

Make the most of them, as BEE and SSS are due to retire in May, to be replaced at MCO by a B744 - I think subject to the on-time delivery of the next two A346s.

[Biggles Flies Undone]

Thanks for all the replies :ok:

I think I recall reading somewhere that VS had just completed an expensive cabin makeover on the classic fleet when 9/11 occurred and traffic dropped. Are these the ones parked in the desert? If so, that must have been a choker for Sir Richard :(

Anyway, I can recall many happy trips across the Pond in the classics and it's sad to see them quickly disappearing from passenger service.

[scroggs]

The aeroplanes went through a major refurbishment at Auckland before being delivered to UK (I was one of the lucky people who got that job!). They were fitted at that time with the 'J2000' fit, which is the Upper Class fit recently superceded by the Upper Class Suite, along with the still-current orange and purple economy cabin, and up to date IFE. On delivery to UK in bare metal, they were immediately painted in the current VS colour scheme, and were thus some of the first Virgin aircraft to be so liveried.

After 9/11, Virgin decided it needed to reduce its fleet by around 25% to absorb the anticipated reduction in passengers, particularly to and from the USA. At that time, the B742 fleet still included a number of P&W powered aircraft which had been with us a long time, and were well past their sell-by date. Getting rid of these wouldn't have produced the capacity reduction needed, and given that the choice was B742, B744 or A340, the course of action was clear - get rid of all the B742s, including the 'new' ones, remove it from the AOC and therefore delete the engineering support it required. Unfortunately, Virgin didn't get the sums quite right, and so we needed to retain some of that capacity - hence the deal with Air Atlantic.

[Biggles Flies Undone]

Thanks, Scroggs :ok:

I'll keep my fingers crossed that these fine ladies find a new home rather than seeing out their days in the desert.

[jammydonut]

I heard that Sir B went very puce when visiting his Moonship
Factory in Mohave, as they drove onto town some minion pointed out that the Logoed Tailfins could be seen from the highway....
"~xx$££££ing get them removed.....and you are fired...."etc.