dave..
Being amongst other things ex BA747 I know a lot of people got very attached to the Queen of the Skies and there were some very strong opinions expressed on the 744 sell off last year - probably understandable but the sentiment in some quarters was such that some employees had a theory that was verging into tinfoil hat territory regarding the motives for the scrapping…..
That said I find it very hard to disagree with either nguba and Vokes on this. From an economic /inventory POV once the potential scale of the stoppage became known it’s hard to see any justification for doing anything other than sell the airframes off.