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.
A350 XWB (MSN1) First Engine Run, Toulouse, France. Photo by Airbus.
On Sunday, The first Airbus A350-900 (MSN1) successfully completed starting up its engines, making it one step close to flight. Although Airbus is not stating when the A350 will have its first flight, many are hoping it will be in time for the Paris Air Show, which will run from June 17-23.
When the first flight occurs there will be six crew members on-board: two flight test pilots, one test flight engineer and three flight test engineers. The two test pilots will be Peter Chandler, an Experimental Flight Test Pilot with Airbus since 2000 and Chief Test Pilot since 2011 and Guy Magrin, an Experimental Flight Test Pilot with Airbus since 2003 and Project Pilot for the A350 XWB.
Airbus plans to deliver the first A350-900 XWB in the second half of 2014 to its launch customer: Qatar Airways.
