Originally Posted by
742-xx
Regarding the immediate retirement of the 747s - I remember after 9/11 Virgin retired their fleet of 747-200s only to have to lease them back from Air Icelandic (?) when the predicted downturn wasn't quite as bad as predicted.
There's got to be a chance of history repeating itself here, surely ?
They were different aircraft. The retired aircraft were JT9 powered -200 (G-VIRG may have been the last one). The Air Atlanta lease ins were RR powered G-VCAT (?) and G-VRUM from memory......but get your point about unexpected recovery (hopefully) and under capacity to take advantage.