For reasons not unconnected with Sep 11th, VS decided on a 25% capacity cut in October last year. This was to be achieved by retiring the remaining 8 (at the time, I think) 747-200s. 2, G-VPUF and G-VZZZ, remain and are due to retire on 28th March 02. As 747 says, ZZ was retrieved from the desert because of the mod programme needed for the 744s.. .Virgin Holidays had sold lots of MAN-MCO hols for the 2002 season and had obviously assumed that VS would fly them - someone, somewhere presumably hadn't noticed this when the big scale down was announced! VS no longer has the capacity to run this route in-house, and so has contracted with Air Atlanta (a 742 operator) to hold an ex-VS B742 on its AOC for this route. All the flight crew (tech and cabin) will be Virgin staff, operating on Air Atlanta's AOC.. .This presumably allows VS to remove the 742 from its AOC, with all the associated engineering and operational back-up and costs, while presenting an outwardly VS operation to the MAN-MCO punters.. .Please note, peeps, this is not a political comment or a cue for an argument, just a brief statement of the facts to answer one or two of the above questions.