The stationary features of the wind of P Cygni are considerably different from those of ‘normal’ supergiant winds with comparable luminosity. In contrast to such winds, which are generally accepted to be driven by radiation pressure, P Cygni’s mass-loss rate is higher by a factor of 5, the terminal velocity is higher by a factor of 10, and the velocity law itself is much flatter than would be expected from a first glance at glance at typical scaling relations. However, these relations depend crucially and non-linearly on the star’s distance from the Eddington limit, which for P Cyg is very small (see below). Here we investigate whether the acceleration mechanism of P Cygni’s wind can also be explained by line pressure and to what extent self-consistent wind models represent the observed quantities (especially the IR energy distribution).