Virgin Sun ceased trading post 9/11 but at the time the airline was making the money but the Holiday side was not profitable
First Choice / Air 2000 took the Virgin Sun part over but not allowed to use the name. First Choice took the Allocations in Resorts and Air 2000 took the RWY slots. 50% of cabin crew went to Air 2000 and remainder went to Mainline Virgin.
If RB had kept the Airline going as a charter airline that other Tour Operators use I believe it would still be flying. Most reports
from passenger flying on Virgin Sun were all positive.
There was no seperation from Virgin Atlantic / Virgin Sun. The ops / Crewing / Flt Planning / Engineering was all done by Virgin and kept under the one banner
LONG LIVE VIRGIN SUN

SunDancedKid :

Do you recall what the actual ownership of Virgin Sun was ? Owned by independent investors with a small amount belonging to VA/V Group/ RB personally ? was the ops side done for them under some sort of management agreement ?

Virgin flew the 727 on their Luton - Dublin route in competition with Ryanair and their 1-11’s. Virgin seemed to have very good loads before deciding their future was in long haul.

photo taken at LTN http://www.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!/open.file/518136/M/

Seem to remember they had 2 727's EI-BVO and EI-BUP plus a Viscount at LTN doing Dublin and Maastricht in the 80's when they had a base at LTN. A Virgin 747 divert even came in once from New York.

Thanks for the info!