And retiring its last four engine jets too, with 7 747-400's stood down today and 4 A330's due to leave as scheduled in the next year.  Another sign that the airlines think this is going to have an effect well into the medium term.

End of an era, indeed.  Flown on many Virgin Atlantic jumbos, destinations ... Miami, Orlando, Washington, Newark, San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Business, leisure, and very personal and family trips. Can't say I fancy any of those destinations in the foreseeable future, but for the absence of doubt, I can't foresee all that far ahead at present.  That's even though we have family in the USA.

I've flown quite a lot with Virgin over the last 25 years, and also been to NZ and back twice (with some internals between the islands) with Air New Zealand, the second trip being RTW when they used to fly from London to Auckland both ways around (stopping at LA westbound and Hong Kong eastbound). Probably they had the best economy class of anyone at the time (late noughties), having sat in it for around 26 hours each way on those trips!

Sadly, ANZ were due to withdraw from the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) in October this year, but have brought that forward and stopped already due to the current situation. The reason they gave for the withdrawal originally was too much competition (from the likes of BA^» (British Airways - about), Virgin, United) on the Heathrow to LA part of the journey. They had already stopped the eastbound route several years earlier, presumably due to competition from the MEB3 (Middle East Big 3)