This can be all yours – Photo: AirlineReporter
Do you want to win a Qatar Airways Airbus A380 model? Of course you do! Lucky for you, we have one and we are looking to give it a new home. All you need to do is make sure you are following us on Twitter, and then retweet our contest tweet and you are eligible. The contest will be open until 5:00 p.m. PDT on Friday, August 26th and at that point we will randomly pick from the valid entries. Here, I will make it easy for you with the official tweet below:
%CODE1%
Update: CONGRATS to @lauratherad for winning this sweet, sweet model! Stay tuned for our next contest!
(not so) FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Can you please give me more details about the model?
Yes. It is a 1:200-sized model (a.k.a. big — 14.5″ long, 16″ wingspan). I can’t tell who makes it, but it has a fancy wooden stand. It’s registration number is A7-APA, which makes it the 137th A380 built, and it first flew in June 2013.
Wait, is this a used model?
The photo is of my personal model. The one we are giving away is brand new, in box. We can be model buddies.
Who is eligible?
If you have a Twitter account and follow the rules — you are. I will ship it anywhere in the world to the winner.
Does the model actually fly?
Yes. Once.
I work for Delta, can I win?
Of course. As long as you proudly display it at work.
Does this come with subsidies?
Ha… funny, but no they are not included.
Can you just declare me the winner?
Yes I can. Will I? No.
I don’t have Twitter?
That sucks. Sorry, you need to do this on Twitter to win. It’s free to sign up!
Can I enter on Snapchat?
What’s Snapchat?
It is a fun app where you can take photos and make yourself a princess or a panda bear that cries rainbows — that work?
Um… no.
Can I just leave a comment on this story?
Sure… I probably will even reply to your comment, but it won’t enter you into the contest.
Can you wish me luck?
Good luck!
British Airways flight BA85 rolls out on YVR’s Rwy 26L – the first scheduled A380 in Vancouver –
Photo: Leighton Matthews | Pacific Air Photo
Western Canada’s first scheduled Airbus A380 service began on Sunday evening, with the arrival of British Airways flight BA85 at Vancouver International Airport. YVR is the airline’s only Canadian A380 destination, and is one of only nine city-pairs worldwide served by one of British Airways’ eleven megajets.
The A380 replaces British Airways’ daily London-YVR Boeing 747 service for the summer season. ’œThis is a terrific market for us, it does tremendously well, so the A380 just perfectly suits the market’ says Robert Antoniuk, British Airways VP Customer Service and Operations, North America West & Mexico. ’œThis flight is absolutely full to capacity today.’ The four-cabin A380 has a total of 469 seats, a significant jump from the 345-seat 747 it replaces.
A6-APC landing as EY454 in Sydney, and I’m in 4A! – Photo: Bernie Proctor
The Boeing 777 just can’t compete with the Airbus A380 when it comes to luxury, but I still enjoyed my previous 777-200LR flight on Etihad. You can’t even put a shower on a commercially configured one! Good thing Etihad ordered 10 Airbus A380s and they have five in service right now. I wanted to try the most supreme of airline products currently out there — the Etihad First Class Apartment — and I did. One cannot experience something like this alone. I had my friend AirlineReporter Senior Correspondent Jacob Pfleger along for the ride.
Jacob would, of course, take a photo of his future seat at the Dubai Airshow, but he did too good a job not to use it. Mine was a lighter brown over in 4A – Photo: Jacob Pfleger | AirlineReporter
My general rule of thumb for first class flying is “if it’s overnight, and you are paying with currency, fly business class.” I looked at AUH-JFK and that was out. So too were some of Etihad’s London flights. Besides that, seven hours on an A380 is nothing. Eventually, I realized the best way to maximize my enjoyment of First Class flying was to do a paradoxically timed “daylight” flight from Abu Dhabi to Sydney. Which was good, because I needed to be in Sydney anyway.
A surprise anniversary party at 40,000 feet! Karen got to wear Emirates’ signature uniform hat. Maybe I should have too, to cut the glare.
’œMr. Slutsken, would you and your wife please join us in the lounge at the back of the cabin?’ asked the Purser, our flight’s senior cabin representative. She had a big smile on her face as she stood beside my business class seat in the Emirates A380 on our flight from Dubai (DXB) to Rome (FCO). I looked back at my wife; we both wanted to be right beside a window, so I was in seat 9K and Karen was in 11K on the remarkably quiet upper deck of the Airbus.
This was the second leg of our special anniversary trip. We always try to do something new for every fifth year, and this was our 35th anniversary. It doesn’t really matter when in the year it happens, so we had planned a trip to Italy in October, months after our actual anniversary date. We wanted to fly business class, and after much research and expert help, we decided to go the long way to Italy. We cashed in a whack of Alaska Airlines and hotel points for reward seats on Emirates. It would be our first time flying the airline, and also our first time in Dubai. Using Emirates’ Dubai Stopover Program, we were able to break our itinerary to spend a few nights before continuing to Rome.
A Lufthansa Airbus A380 at SFO
Traveling from the Bay Area to Europe? Chances are you may find yourself on the Star Alliance trunk route from SFO to Frankfurt. I did recently as I kicked off a trip to Germany, India, and Southeast Asia, celebrating my final few months of freedom between a journalism job and medical school. In my experience, flying to Lufthansa’s ’œFraport’ mega-hub from San Francisco generally meant a trip on United’s venerable ’“ and noticeably aging ’“ 747-400s. While they are beautiful birds from the outside, they don’t make for the best long-haul economy class flights: no seatback screens, no power outlets (although that has since been corrected), and cramped seats, unless you can bump up to Economy Plus or better. Interested in something new, I leapt at the chance to try out Lufthansa’s A380 flight on the same route.
I was glad to be able to book the flight on United ticket stock (ticket number beginning with ’œ016’), which meant I earned both premier qualifying miles (PQMs) and dollars (PQDs) for the flight. With the current UA premier qualifying system, you earn PQMs when you book non-UA ticket stock with Star Alliance partners, but not the PQDs – which are needed for elite qualification.
Heading to the back of the plane, to then go upstairs
Curiously, the confirmation code United provided me allowed me to manage my reservation on Lufthansa’s website, but did not work for online check-in. I found a Lufthansa-specific code buried in a separate email. A bit confusing, but not a huge deal. One downside of booking a Lufthansa-operated flight through United is that you are not always able to pick a seat in advance. That ended up being the case for this flight, and I was dreading the possibility of a back-of-the-bus middle seat. Luckily, seat availability was still good when I checked in online, even though the flight ended up being full.
I had only flown the A380 once before (on Emirates) and assumed that the upper deck was first and business class only. To my surprise, there was an ’œupper deck’ tab on the seat selection window during online check-in. It turns out that on Lufthansa’s newest layout for some of its A380s, there is a premium economy section in the front of the lower deck and a small section ’“ five rows, to be exact ’“ of standard economy at the back of the upper deck. I snagged a window seat at the front of the latter section, thrilled that I would finally get upper-deck bragging rights (though without the usual business class accouterments that usually go with it).
