Boeing workers around ZA002 before th002e test flight today.
ZA002, the second Boeing 787 took to the sky today, showing off its ANA livery. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it to this flight, but there were others who saw it first-hand. Check it out if you missed it live:
These are your five choices. Click on the image to go to the voting page.
JetBlue is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary on February 11, 2010. To get the party started, they asked employees to design a new tail fin livery that will be unveiled during the celebration. JetBlue has the same livery on the body of all their Airbus A320’s, but each one has a unique tail design.
JetBlue had to go through a lot of great submissions, but narrowed it down to the top five shown on this blog. Now you can vote and the highest ranked one will start flying sometime in 2010.
Alaska Airline's Boeing 737-900 (N318AS) with Spirit Of Disneyland II livery
Last Saturday, Alaska Airlines showed off its newest livery, “Spirit of Disneyland II.” Back in 2002 Alaska announced their “Spirit of Disneyland I” livery, which was retired about two weeks ago. Can you tell which one of Mickey’s friends was missing on the first livery?
Because they used a Boeing 737-400 on the first livery, it wasn’t long enough to include Pluto, but since the newest livery is on a Boeing 737-900 (which is about 20′ longer), Alaska was able to include Pluto, re-uniting Mickey and his closest four friends.
The new livery took over 300 gallons of paint, 120 gallons of paint remover (before painting the new livery), and 32,400 feet of tape (which is 108 football fields).
Not only did Alaska show off their new plane, they also flew three “Make a Wish” children from Portland, down to LAX to go to Disneyland.
“When a child with a life-threatening medical condition wishes to meet a Disney character or visit a Disney park, we know that Alaska Airlines and Disneyland Resort are there to make it a dream-come-true,” said Andrew Asato, Make-A-Wish Foundation of Oregon executive director. “With donated tickets and passes, as well as extra-special treatment for wish families, these partners have each provided an unduplicated resource to the Make-A-Wish Foundation for more than 20 years.”
Alaska Airlines has supported the Make-A-Wish Foundation since 1985 and provides air transportation allowing about 80 children’s wishes to be granted each year. The airline invites members of the Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan to donate frequent-flier miles to the Make-A-Wish Foundation through the Charity Miles program. To make a donation of miles, visit alaskaair.com and click on the “Mileage Plan” and “Charity Miles” links.
Boeing takes Simpliflying on a special tour of the Boeing 787 gallery and a sneak peak of what the 787 will look like on the inside. Check out Simpliflying’s blog for additional information and pictures.
CEO Michael O'Leary really loves those Boeing 737's
Ryanair has announced they are breaking off negotiations with Boeing over purchasing 200 737-800’s. In early November I talked about how Ryanair was threatening to stop growth from not being able to reach an agreement with Boeing. The CEO of Ryanair, Michael O’Leary said the airline did come to an agreement, but Boeing is “unwilling to incorporate some other terms and conditions from our existing agreement into this new aircraft order,” O’Leary says. Of course O’Leary won’t elaborate what those details were.
Is this a real threat? I don’t think so. First off Ryanair already has a fleet of over 200 Boeing 737-800’s and is still planning on receiving over 100 more over the next three years. There is no way they are going to add another aircraft type or convert their entire fleet to Airbus. O’Leary also said he might be willing to re-open negotiations next year. Well, next year starts in about two weeks.
Ryanair is one of the fastest growing airlines in the world and it wants to continue its growth. Going after Aer Lingus isn’t working out so hot for them, so they need more planes. I am sure Boeing knows this and isn’t going to let Ryanair bully them around. Boeing already has 152 orders for the Boeing 737 and has delivered 336 so far this year. Yes, another 200 would surely be a good thing but it is not like Boeing needs the orders to keep the 737 rolling.
