The world’s largest airline (based on scheduled passenger-kilometers flown) has recently changed up their employee couture. May 21, 2013 marked United Airline’s 25th anniversary at Newark’s Liberty International Airport (EWR) and felt it would make a great backdrop to show off their new uniforms.
United is the largest airline in the New York area and currently the sole tenant of Newark’s terminal C and the airport serves as their third-largest U.S. Hub. They have more than 13,000 local employees and offer more flights & seats from the region to more world-wide gateways than any other airline in history. Currently, United offers more than 400 flights daily from Newark.
Flying only 900 feet above Fiji was not too shabby.
A media flight is always a special event, but there are a few things that can make it even more special. So how special is a media flight that also happens to be a delivery flight flown by two Airbus “expert pilots” who preformed a 2 hour low altitude fly by with the airline CEO on board as well as the artist responsible for the airlines brand new image? Yea, that is special. What else could Air Pacific, soon to be Fiji Airways, possibly have added to this flight to make it more special? I can’t think of anything. This is the story of a small airline that made a big impression.
Air Pacific is re-branding in a big way, which I detailed in a review of their new Airbus A330. To help promote these big changes, Fiji Airways in cooperation with Tourism Fiji invited a small handful of travel bloggers and journalists, as well as one #AvGeek (me), to fly out to Fiji and witness the delivery ceremonies of their second new Airbus A330.
A Rendition of what a Lufthansa Cargo Boeing 777F will look like – Photo: Lufthansa Cargo
Two years ago an interesting order was placed with Boeing. One that might have slipped under the radar for most. This order didn’t really make all too many waves in the AvGeek world and to be honest, I didn’t even realize it myself till I was tipped off by a fellow AvGeek.
In March 2011 Lufthansa Cargo put in an order for five 777 freighters and this spurred a large amount of curiosity since it did not seem like the ideal choice to replace their aging fleet of 18 classic MD-11 aircraft.
Safe and sound in my Qantas First Class suite, cruising towards back to my new home in the USA, I was relaxed and enjoying myself. The crew was there to make my flight as enjoyable as possible and Ahead of me was almost 8000 miles of open sky and 14 hours of bliss, luxury and pampering.
I was nicely settled into my seat with a hot towel and drink from the crew and the majority of other passengers (it was a full flight today, 100% in all cabins) were hitting the menu pretty hard. After my indulgent breakfast in the lounge, I was happy to delay my lunch for a bit and get some work done. Pretty easy to do with the suites since they have power at the seat and a gigantic tray table; big enough to allow you to spread out any files that you might be working on.
The video above has been on the internet for years and is nothing new. What is new, is that recent unclassified documents confirm that it is real and give additional details of the incident.
According to Spiegel Online, the clip was taken from an 88lb LUNA Drone that shows the UAV about to strike an Ariana Airbus A300 aircraft while flying over Afghanistan. The German drone came with-in about six feet striking the left wing and could have potentially caused an accident. Although an object that size, hitting the end of the wing, would not necessarily mean the aircraft would crash to the ground.
After passing the jetliner, the drone hit the A300’s wake and crashed in Kabul.
