After our big Airbus A350 announcement at Farnborough on Monday, Throwback Thursday is taking us back to our first ever Airbus aircraft. Since starting flying in 1984 we’d been growing our fleet of Boeing 747s. But as our network grew so did the need for a smaller long haul aircraft. The A340 fitted the bill perfectly and in November 1993 we welcomed G-VBUS to our fleet. Famously named ‘Lady in Red’ by Princess Diana, the aircraft later went on to fly for Virgin Nigeria and Air Comet.

Richard with Princess Diana naming G-VBUS 'Lady in Red'[/caption] Our Airbus A340-300 fleet continued to serve us up until Rainbow Lady, G-VSUN, made her farewell flight in July 2015.  We now look forward to welcoming the A350 to our fleet in 2019 and many more happy miles on Airbus aircraft.

Clipped from our internal magazine - Richard inspects G-VBUS at the Airbus Toulouse factory in 1993.