V-Flyer

Was wondering that in the absence of an official announcement, if the order was actually confirmed? All of the news reports that sprung up were according to "a source" rather than VS itself. Is stuff like this usually done at an airshow or something? Forgive the nooby question, I wasn't really around when the 789s/A333s were announced! Is this what happened last time?

Would be the natural successor to the 744 so lets hope so.

Airbus has started talking about the possibility of a stretch version of the A350 that 's larger than the -1000 (which in itself is already a stretch version).

I have nothing to back this up but my guess would be that neither Virgin nor Airbus will announce anything until Airbus decide if there's enough interest in the super-stretch version to make it worthwhile. If it does get made, you may find Virgin's order morphs into the larger version of the aircraft and if it turns out that there's not enough interest then Airbus gets to announce another order for A350-1000s with no loss of face.

Farnborough (16 July) is a likely place for such an announcement.