September 11 was a suprise Dan, as was being laid off within 6 weeks, however they did ask everyone back and many did return, unless they had found greener pastures elsewhere as you did.
The biggest threat to job security is the rocketing oil price, and that affects all airlines in the medium term, hedging only covers a fixed period although some clever sods stand to make money on it.
The airline has diversified its route structure in the years since 2001 with no new US routes although some frequencies have been upped. I think its also fair to say that the company has changed quite a bit, 2001 was the catalyst but there were structural issues prior to that date which have since been sorted out. Caution is the name of the game rather than new routes just for the fun of it. Virgin has been around for over 20 years now, it survived two Gulf wars, SARS, 9/11 and various downturns not to mention other carriers attempts to force it out of business in the early days. The company is also making money. If VS were to fold at this stage I suspect it would be part of a general catastrophe which would take many other carriers with it.
The expansion has been stretched out over a longer timescale than initially envisioned but recruitment seems to be continuing at a steady pace, mostly for the A340 but as SFO's from the 744 start to move over to the Airbus for command there could well be more Boeing recruitment to cover the empty RHS slots.
As has been stated before, the sooner you join, the sooner you will have a cushion of people below you. There are no certainties in life but I'm not feeling terribly worried for my job at the moment. Hope this helps.
Over to you Scroggs.....