Beautiful intake fan blades on the Airbus A321neo
Recently, America lost an airline. Well, sort of. The happy Eskimo on Alaska Airlines’ tail got hungry and decided to gobble up Virgin America, the relatively small but much beloved Bay Area-based carrier. As Alaska adopted the fleet and people of Redwood (Virgin America’s old callsign), it started repainting Virgin planes and making plans to replace aircraft interiors with a consistent Alaska product.
But at least for now, remnants of Virgin America’s unique style can still be found … if you know where to look. Try Alaska’s new A321neos, originally ordered by Virgin America. We experienced one firsthand on a transcon flight from Washington Dulles to San Francisco, and were delighted by the spacious seats, cabin comfort, and the very purple Virgin sense of style.
Read on for more photos and videos from this new-yet-nostalgic ride.
In 1948, United Airlines established a maintenance base at San Francisco International Airport. Seventy years later, the place is still hard at work keeping the airline’s planes safe and in the air. Every year, United brings tens of thousands of its employees to the base for Family Day, and this year the airline invited us to take part.
What a wild, awesome day it was! We got to meet “Chix Fix,” United’s award-winning all-female team of aircraft technicians, go on a tour of the maintenance facility, and celebrate the day with the United family. We even got to sample some food from Boeing’s newest plane: the 777-200BBQ (tail number N1BBQ)! AvGeeks eat your heart out, and read on for plenty of photos from the day’s fun.
Icelandair’s TF-FIO “Krafla” undergoing maintenance in the new ITS Hangar at the Keflavik Airport
During a long weekend trip back earlier this year, I had the chance to go visit the new ITS (Icelandair Technical Services) hangar at Keflavik Airport (KEF) in Iceland. As an AvGeek, any day at the airport is a great day, but it’s even better when I get the opportunity for a visit behind the scenes.
ITS is an operational division of Icelandair. With Icelandair’s current growth and more aircraft being added to their existing fleet of Boeing 757s, 767s, and – most recently – the Boeing 737 MAX, there was a need for ITS to expand and build a second maintenance hangar.
The new hangar in the background, plus an Icelandair Boeing 757 cargo plane and one of three new Boeing 737 MAX jets behind it
I had visited here once before, back in the fall of 2016, and I watched the construction workers all bundled up to withstand the harsh Icelandic weather doing work on the foundation for the new hangar.
For my visit this year, I arrived at Keflavik airport nice and early around lunch time, checked in my bag for my flight later that afternoon, then proceeded to walk from the terminal over to the ITS hangar. My contact had offered me to pick me up by car, but I declined and said I would walk rain or shine.
The aviation sector is responsible for roughly two percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. If current trends continue, its share of the total is expected to grow substantially in coming decades. Fortunately, in recent years a number of airlines have made concerted efforts to make flying more environmentally sustainable. Most of the solutions to date have involved biofuels made from plant-based compounds. But Virgin Atlantic took a different approach, partnering with the U.S.-based company LanzaTech that was developing a technology to turn industrial pollution into jet fuel.
On October 2nd, the partnership achieved a major milestone: the first passenger flight powered (in part) by the innovative new fuel. There was plenty of fanfare around the flight, which we were on hand to cover. And though the flight was one incremental step out of many required to make the tech mainstream, it was still a milestone worth celebrating. Read on for our full coverage of the announcement, press conference, and the flight itself — including a surprise appearance by Sir Richard Branson!
Photo: Doug Peters/PA Wire
Heading out soon.
My commentary from today, Oct 12, 2018: If you are connected to the airline world, you have probably seen that Singapore Airlines has re-taken the title of offering the world’s longest flight by re-starting their Singapore to Newark route. To celebrate the re-starting of the flight, using an Airbus A350ULR (That ULR stands for Ultra Long Range btw), I wanted to share my story from about five years ago where I live blogged taking this flight on an Airbus A340-500. Read below to experience a bit of the past and follow along our friend, Chris Sloan, on Airways as he starts his live blog adventure taking the flight today. If you have not experienced one of these super long flights, it is worth trying… at least once. Although, even five years later, I am not sure I would do SEA-LAX-SIN, be only on the ground for about a day, before heading home on SIN-EWR-SEA. I love flying, but I think I prefer to have a bit more time on the ground before taking those ultra long flights back-to-back (but I am also five years older and have a harder time recovering)!
My full story re-posted from October 13, 2013: It is almost that time to board a Singapore Airlines Airbus A340-500 and be a part of the world’s longest flight. Okay, well I still have a few hours left. Before then, I will be checking out of my hotel, getting a short tour of the airport, probably relax in the lounge for a minute or two and then find my seat for the next 18 hours or so. I will be departing on SQ 22, which leaves about 10:55am local time [which is 7:55pm 10/13 in Seattle or 2:55am 10/30 GMT].
You can follow along the flight on FlightAware and hopefully on this blog. Here is the catch though; due to the flight plan there is a good chance that I won’t be able to access the internet the whole time and when I do, it could be slow. Have no fear though, if I cannot connect up, I will write the story as a live blog on my local laptop and be sure to update when I have a chance. Worst case, that means after I get settled into my hotel after arriving at Newark (aka worst case scenario).
Since I will be crossing about half the existing time zones (and the international date line), I plan to update based on time spent on the aircraft. Once I enter the cabin, I will start a timer and update the post based on the elapsed time. I am hoping to stay awake the whole time, but know that I might need a little nap. Also realize that on a flight this long, there might not be too much happening between, “oh starting this movie,” and “done with the movie,” so my silence might not mean I cannot connect to the internet, but because I am doing something boring. Well, nothing is boring while on this flight, but I don’t want to give away plot lines of a movie.
With live blogging and possibly having a Singapore Sling or two, I realize that the grammar might not be 100%. No worries, it will all be worked out as the flight progresses or afterwards, so try to have a little more flexibility for the short-term and we shall do just fine. Well, I think that just about lays the ground work for how this shin-dig will work out. Hopefully you will be hearing from me soon and if not, know that I am enjoying the flight and looking forward to sharing soon.