What kind of plane is this?
I was visiting a friend and at a sort of dive-bar that had this photo on the wall. I Tweeted out asking people to guess what kind of plane it belongs to and got all sorts of answers. I decided to also put it up on the blog to see if you can find out what kind of plane is this?
Bonus points if you know the bar (was in the greater Seattle area).
Harrier at Oshkosh from David Brown on Vimeo.
Just before leaving Oshkosh Airventure on Saturday everyone got a real treat watching this privately owned Harrier over and land vertically in front of a cheering crowd.
Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 and Allegiant Air MD-83 in Las Vegas
Who doesn’t want more flights to Hawaii? Alaska Airlines recently announced they will be starting service from Bellingham (located about 1.5hrs north of Seattle right by the Canadian border) to Honolulu starting January 7th.
The fact that Alaska is continuing to expand their flights to Hawaii is not surprising, but opening a route that most people assume Allegiant will be soon using their new Boeing 757’s on is interesting.
As Dan Webb points out on his blog, Alaska’s press release points out they have amenities included in their basic fares, which seems to be comparing them to another airline that does not, presumably Allegiant.
I wrote to Allegiant to see if they have a comment about Alaska announcement and not surprisingly they did not since Allegiant has been pretty tight-lipped about their future plans. I also spoke with Bobbie Eagen, with Alaska Communications, to see if this move is directed towards the possibility of Allegiant flying the same route and she told me, “The new Bellingham-Honolulu service is a natural progression of Alaska’s Hawaiian expansion,” she continued, “There’s great demand from customers living in Bellingham and the Lower Mainland and adding nonstop service to Honolulu, one of our most popular vacation destinations, made sense.”
Either way, competition is always good for the customer and watching a little airline route battle is good for us airline nerds…Game on!
Image: gtarded
The Southwest Boeing 737-700 was parked right next to some awesome planes.
This weekend was super busy, but beyond exciting. I was invited to join Southwest Airlines on their special flight from Midway Airport (MDW), in Chicago to the big AirVenture in Oshkosh, WI (OSH). How could I say no to that opportunity?
I got to meet so many awesome people that I have interacted with on Twitter, that I haven’t been able to meet in person. Some, who work for Southwest but many who also do not. Our flight leaving from MDW was leaving at 7am, so it was an early morning but worth it. The Boeing 737-700 was only about half full and it is always awesome to be on a flight with no “real” passengers but with airline employees, media and a few invited guests. The flight from MDW to OSH is the shortest flight I have been on with a Boeing 737 — only about 30 minutes. Enough time to take off, level out and back down again. Since there were no passengers, they were able to leave the cockpit door open, so we could go up and say “hi” while in mid-flight. When’s the last time anyone has been able to do that on scheduled service?
How many times can you see this view outside a Boeing 737 window?
The cloud level was low and we were able to come down below the clouds well before landing, skimming just over the water. We arrived to OSH to many people lined up and waving from the sidelines, it was very cool. Then we were towed from the taxi way, through the ground, feet from DC3’s and other amazing planes to the center of the Aeroshell Square, where a lot of cool planes are being displayed. Being pulled along with hundreds of people waving and stopping behind a C-5, next to a DC-7 and FA-18 is pretty surreal.
I felt like someone famous coming off the aircraft. I felt very lucky that a blog reader @IKluft was happy to show me and a few others around for the day. He was at AirVenture all week and was well versed with the best plane locations (thanks Ian!).
Talk about airplane nerd heaven. I don’t even know how to describe all the amazing airplanes, events and people that were at AirVenture. I guess a picture is worth a thousand words and I have quite a few pictures and a few videos to share:
* My photos I took during the day
* Time-lapse video landing at Oshkosh
* Time-lapse video of C-17 doors closing
* Photos from @ImperfectSense
* Photos from @bradc314
I will be adding more in the next few days as well…
CargoLux Boeing 747-8F taking off for a test flight at Paine Field (N5573S)
Last Tuesday a new Cargolux Boeing 747-8 took off from Paine Field to continue its test flights and unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it. Luckily two awesome guys from Portland, OR, Alex and Russell, were able to get up to Everett, WA in time to watch her fly. Russell got two amazing photos (see larger one of the one above and also a second one) and Alex was able to get a video of the Boeing 747-8 taking off.