Originally Posted by
James7
When times are tough the first item to go is the shiny new car sitting in the garage. Virgin should dump all those expensive new aircraft, they are all leased at around $1m/month, the 747 is a fraction of that. Fuel is cheap. ETOPS maintenance is very expensive.
https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1399391
$1 m a month sounds like a long term financial lease. Ironically, it is actually easier (and cheaper) to get rid of owned aircraft than leased aircraft (under normal economic circumstances). Owned aircraft you can just sell, leased aircraft require all sorts of negotiation and legal work, especially if the lease has not expired yet... Even when the lease term is over, there are lots of loopholes to jump through.