My Ride to LAX – A Qantas A380 named after Sir Reginald Duigan – Photo: Mal Muir – AirlineReporter.com
THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF PART 1 OF FLYING IN QATAS FIRST CLASS ON AN AIRBUS A380…
After leaving the Qantas Lounge, I headed back downstairs into the terminal in Melbourne and boarded directly through the lower airbridge to the Airbus A380 heading to Los Angeles. It was hard for me to realize that this was really happening. 2.5 years of waiting and the moment was here; flying in first class on a Qantas A380.
I was greeted at door 2L and then turned left. Left into happiness, left into exclusivity, left into REAL First Class. Qantas has its First Class Suites on the lower deck of the A380 unlike Emirates, Lufthansa or Thai Airways which all have them on the upper deck.
A Korean Air Airbus A380 visits me at home
For nearly my entire life, I have lived in the shadow of one of the busiest airports in the country. Draw a straight line from my house and you end up on JFKs runway 22L in almost 2 miles. Arrivals glide across the sky mere seconds from landing, while departures roar directly overhead. When people ask me “why are you so into aviation?” my answer should be “the real question is what took me so long?”
JFK and airplanes are a daily fact of life in this area. Most people are so used to A380s at 500 feet over their backyard, they don’t even look up. For many years of my life, I was one of these people. DC8s, 727s, 707s, Concorde, all the classics you might now find in a museum were all right over my head, but I just never looked up.
Garuda Indonesia’s First Boeing 777-300ER (PK-GIA) at Paine Field.
This photograph shows Garuda Indonesia’s first Boeing 777-300ER (PK-GIA) at Paine Field in full livery, which was taken earlier today. The airline has 10 on order and the first is expected to be delivered in June 2013.
Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport (YWG)
Photo: Gerry Kopelow
Dear YWG,
Somehow, AirlineReporter.com missed the opening of your new terminal in October, 2011. We must have been busy with the 787, A380, airline mergers and stuff like that. But we still want to talk about you.
And by the way, we do know that your full name is ’œWinnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport’, but frankly, that’s a lot to type over and over. So we’ll just call you YWG. Hope you’re OK with that.
Sincerely,
Howard at AirlineReporter.com
OK, everyone, let’s review what we know about YWG and Winnipeg, the capital city of the province of Manitoba, Canada.
The first Copper River salmon comes of the Alaska Airlines 737 Combi. Photo by Shannon Leigh Kehoe / AirlineReporter.com
I love my sleep and it takes quite a bit to get me up before the sun. The first Copper River Salmon brought in by Alaska Air Cargo is good enough reason as any.
This early morning event, which just wrapped up, has become a yearly tradition that started in 2010. Luckily in previous years there was no rain, but this year we were not so lucky. But being at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, rain can never stop an event like this.
The Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-400 Combi arrived with 24,000 pounds of Copper River salmon to an eager group. One lucky (or unlucky) fish was chosen to be filleted and cooked up in a competition between multiple chefs.
