First off I want to say how cool it is that I can blog about the Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental one day and then the Airbus A380 the next for the exact airline. Anyhow, tomorrow, Tuesday May 10th at 11am, San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is hosting a “A380 Plane Spotting Party.” The shindig will start at 11am at Bayfront Park and should provide good views of Lufthansa’s Airbus A380 landing at SFO. For more information check out their website.
I am also heading down to SFO and am excited to get on an Airbus A380 for the first time. Should be able to get a full tour inside and out. Be sure to watch my Twitter (what’s Twitter?) for plenty of photo updates throughout the day tomorrow.
The second Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental (named RC021) took to the skies on April 26th and Boeing has just release their official video.
This 747-8I is special, since it will be the first Intercontinental to actually enter passenger service and will be delivered to Lufthansa Airlines. The first (RC001), which first took off on March 20th, will be going to a private buyer.
As reported earlier, even though this Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental will be going to Lufthansa, it does not have the full livery since the aircraft is going through flight testing. However, I have heard rumors that a full liveried Lufthansa Boeing 747-8I might be coming out of the paint hangar sometime this summer.
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Virgin Australia’s Airbus A330 (VH-XFB) arriving at Sydney for the first time. Photo by Virgin Australia.
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Virgin Australia’s Airbus A330 (VH-XFB) landing at Sydney. Photo by Virgin Australia.
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Three will enter, one will leave. Where once there was Virgin Blue who operated domestic flights with in Australia and then V Australia and Pacific Blue for international, there will only one: Virgin Australia.
“From today, Virgin Australia will operate domestically in Australia,” Virgin Australia Airlines’ first ever CEO John Borghetti said. “By the end of the year, our international product V Australia and Pacific Blue will also operate under the Virgin Australia name.”
This new livery looks slick and is closest to the old V Australia livery, which I have been a fan of. I have no sad feelings seeing the Pacific Blue and Virgin Blue livery disappear. I have never been a fan of the red, red, red livery.
The new Boeing 747-8F is one majestic aircraft. Along with all the majesticness (yes I just made that a word) comes a lot of weight. The 747-8F can take off weighing nearly one million pounds and for the flight tests, Boeing needs to make sure the aircraft can successfully complete an aborted take off, fully loaded.
The Ultimate Rejected Takeoff (yes that is official terminology) is not made easy. First they loaded up the aircraft to about 975,000 pounds. Then they made sure the brakes were as worn as possible — not something that would happen during normal maintenance.
Once the aircraft got above 200mph, the Boeing test pilot, Captain Kirk Vining, slammed on the brakes. During a normal aborted take off, the pilot would also use thrust reversers, but not for this test. All that energy (and it is a lot) went directly to the brakes.
The 747-8F was able to stop about 700 feet sooner than Boeing was expecting. However, stopping is just half the battle. As you can see in the video, once the aircraft is stopped, the brakes were glowing red. Even though a fire crew was on the scene, they let the brakes sit for five minutes to see how the 747-8F would react.
This video shows a worst case scenario. Even if you have experienced a rejected take off as a passenger, it most likely wasn’t this violent. This just goes to show that aircraft can handle a lot and are extremely safe.
For more information and a second video, check out Boeing’s website.
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Alaska Boeing 737 (N607AS) leaves Portland, heading to Las Vegas. Photo by Russell Hill.
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New Alaska Airlines livery after landing at Portland. Photo by Russell Hill.
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New Timbers livery on Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-700 as seen today in Portland. Photo by Alaska Airlines.
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Alaska Airlines Timbers livery with a Timber. Photo by Alaska.
Click any photo for larger version.
Back in February, Alaska Airlines held a contest for customers and fans to design a special Portland Timbers (Portland’s soccer team) livery. Surprisingly my livery design did not win. I guess it makes sense since the three finalist’s liveries were a tad bit better.
The judges actually liked two of the liveries so much, they decided to do a combined livery using Paul Wright and John Bode’s designs.
“Paul and John’s winning designs came together seamlessly to create one of the most unique paint themes in our fleet,” said Joe Sprague, Alaska Airlines’ vice president of marketing. “The plane’s iconic green and yellow colors will be hard to miss from the ground or in the air.”
Today at Portland International Airport (PDX) Alaska Airlines showed off the new livery. The new paint scheme took 130 gallons of paint, 4500 sheets of sandpaper and 51,000 feet of masking tape.
The Boeing 737-700 will fly throughout Alaska’s network throughout the 2011 MLS season and will join their fleet of other special liveried aircraft.
I really love this livery. I liked both winners and this really puts them together to create a vibrant and fun livery. I cannot wait to catch this livery in person.
Updated 8:20pm: Added another photo from Alaska Airlines and two great photos of the Boeing 737 landing and taking off from PDX by Russell Hill (thanks Russell). You can check out even more photos on Alaska’s Facebook page.
