Click on the image to watch the Pan Am Boeing 747 video.
This is a pretty slick video showing the ins and out of a Pan Am Boeing 747-100. It does not start out in English, but no worries, it turns into English and what you see is much more important than what you hear anyhow.
From the control tower, to starting up the engines to the cockpit, to the Worldport — this is one sweet classic ten minute video that shows off Pan Am 747 Clippers: N656PA, N750PA and N741PA.
Enjoy!
No Airbus A380 wings are going anywhere -- simmer on down folks.
“If it bleeds it leads” — a nice classic saying of writing sensational stories to get more traffic.
When I first heard of small cracks being found on Qantas and Singapore Airlines A380s I read up on it and found it to be a non-issue and not really worthy of writing a story. The majority of media covered it the way that they should — that cracks were found and they are no big deal. Some examples:
Toronto Star by Lesley Ciarula Taylor:
‘Non-critical’ cracks inside wings of Airbus A380 spark grounding call
ATWOnline by Geoffrey Thomas:
Minor cracks found in Qantas A380 wings pose no safety threat
Reuters by Harry Suhartono and Narayanan Somasundaram:
Singapore Air, Qantas say cracks found in Airbus A380 wings
USA Today by Ben Mutzabaugh:
Cracks found on A380 wing parts called ‘non-critical’
Then I start seeing more and more sensational headlines that were very misleading and it started to frustrate me. They acted like planes were going to start falling out of the sky and everyone needs to panic. Some of those examples:
Daily Mail by Rob Waugh:
World’s biggest super-jumbos must be GROUNDED, say engineers after cracks are found in the wings of three Airbus A380s
– Wow, even capitalizing the word “grounded” — classy.
CNET by Edward Moyer:
World’s largest passenger plane may be unsafe, some say
– I love the “some say,” it doesn’t really matter who, just some people are saying it and we are reporting it.
Gizmodo by Jamie Condliffe:
Airbus Refuses To Ground A380s Despite Cracks In Their Wings
– Or, they might refuse to ground them, because they do not need to be grounded.
BBC News by Tim Allman:
Airbus A380 fleet should be grounded, say engineers
– Well if engineers are saying it, then it has to be true.
What interests me is that those “some say,” and “engineers” all turn out to be the same one person in all these stories…
“We can’t continue to gamble with people’s lives and hope they make it until their four-year inspection,’ said Steve Purvinas, federal secretary for the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association.
What almost all the news sources do not say is that Purvinas’ organization has been fighting against Qantas’ decision to outsource maintenance jobs. Interesting huh? It would seem to me that this guy and the ALAEA might have an agenda.
Safeskies (an organization specializes in airline safety) chairman David Forsyth stated that, “I doubt the ALAEA union which made the comments, is technically trained or qualified to argue against Airbus structural design engineers about cracks in their aircraft. Airbus will investigate these cracks and promulgate an inspection program, agreed by the safety Regulators.” He continued with, “Using safety as a weapon in IR disputes, without reasonable grounds, is like the boy who cried wolf. Repeated ad nauseam, the impact will lessen over time, and if eventually there is a valid safety issue, it might be dismissed as just another rant.”
Airbus has confirmed the cracks, but stated that they are not a safety issue. “We have traced the origin to a material-related manufacturing issue and developed an inspection and repair procedure which will be done during routine, scheduled, maintenance checks. This is not a safety issue. Aircraft performance is not affected. Any fix, if necessary, can be done during regular (4 year) maintenance.”
Every single airliner ever build has had issues that do not affect safety. Aircraft manufactures issue thousands of service bulletins and the huge majority of them are very minor.
This really is a non-story that should have never received much coverage outside airline trade journals. Yet, it was too tempting for some journalists and their editors to write that an engineer stated that the fleet of A380s should be grounded. The airline business is a disproportionately mis-represented business already and stories like this do not help the situation.
I wish I had some additional news to share about Aviation Geekfest 2012, but right now the Future of Flight and I are still working things out and since nothing has been 100% locked down, I am unable to share the details. I can say that #AGF12 should be bigger and better than any one before it and I am very excited.
It looks like it will probably start either late morning or early afternoon and go into the evening on Sunday February 19th. There were will be parts where you must sign up (because of limited space) , but others when anyone and everyone can show up (later in the event).
We aren’t sure what will happen right now, but I can tell you that something WILL be happening — so make plans to be here.
What you can do for now is sign up for the #AGF12 mailing list. By signing up, you will make sure to hear about all the updates as soon as we have them. Although I will keep updating my blog about details, it is best to be on the list since there were will be limited slots for the really cool stuff and you do not want to be late to register.
Waiting for your luggage at baggage claim can be a real drag. Passengers who just arrived just after midnight on Christmas day at Qubec City Jean Lesage International Airport received a special little surprise.
While the 36 passengers waited for their luggage, wrapped packages starting coming out, each with one of their names on it.
“People were very surprised. They were waiting for their luggage and when they saw the first gifts, they watched in disbelief. One of them found that each box was labeled in the name of a passenger and all began to make the distribution supported by our employees,” said Jonathan Trudeau, airport spokesperson.
The presents ended up being fleece blankets with “YQB” embroidered on them (the airport’s code). The flight was the first one of Christmas day and the airport wanted to celebrate with something a bit different.
Thanks to James Burke for pointing this story out to me. Note that the original story was in French and I used Google to translate — meaning the quote might not be spot on.
The REAL Sunwing livery on a Boeing 737-800 in Toronto.
Will the real Sunwing Airlines livery please stand up?
While in Toronto, I quickly caught glimpse of a livery I was not a fan of. I wasn’t able to catch the name, but after a little research I found it to be Sunwing Airlines. It took a bit longer to actually find what their “real” livery was, since there were quite a few hodge-podge mixture of different liveries. Some examples: Viking, TUIfly, Hapag-Lloyd, Thompsonfly, Boeing Green, Euro Atlantic, did I miss any? It became obvious that this airline likes to lease planes. I actually had to go to their website to make sure what their “real” livery was and it turns out, it is the one I saw in Toronto.
With leasing out so many planes, of course they need to keep their livery simple, but this one just doesn’t work for me. I think what really bothers me is having the words on the fuselage and then on the tail where they are hard to read. I really like their sun logo and think it would have looked nice on the tail. Also, for some reason the engines being blue bothers my eye — they probably would have look better orange. I mean this is by no means a horrible livery, but a few simple changes could really make it shine.
Although fun for airline spotters, it does make it kind of hard for your customers to know your brand when there are so many different looks, but I guess that is the down side to leasing aircraft from airlines.
Sunwing was founded in 2005 and operates a fleet of about 20 aircraft (all Boeing 737-800s). According to their website they are, “Canada’s leading high frills, low cost airline.” They call their high frills the Champagne Service, which actually gives a lot of complimentary things not seen on most airlines today (like champagne, food, headsets and more). They operated scheduled and charter service to the US, Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, South America and of course Canada.
Have any of you flown them and can describe how the Champagne Service was? Seems like if you can get past the mediocre livery, the flight experience is not too shabby and really that is what matters most right?
Image: Reinhard Zinabold