June 2009 Archives

Canada's The Globe and the Mail reports Air Canada planned to unveil in Vancouver next week its last 777, which sports a special Vancouver 2010 Olympic decal.

But plane spotters at Paine Field where Boeing manufactures the jet captured the aircraft with the special decal and posted it on the internet. You can view the nifty aircraft here and here.

"Our jaws kind of dropped," an Air Canada spokeswoman told the paper. "It was the first time most of us had seen it ourselves."

Air Canada may have been surprised, but they certainly understood images could leak out. "An airplane's a pretty big item."

Flightglobal-ers were invited to the Preview Day at this year's Biggin Hill Air Show - one of the UK's big calendar events for air display fans.

Flightglobal's Defence Editor, Craig Hoyle spoke to David "Monty" Montenegro who flies with the Red Arrows display team as Red 3; and Jamie Hunter, aviation photographer and reporter. 

 

Zero G, the only FAA-approved provider of commercial weightless flights, hosted the world's first-ever weightless wedding this past weekend, the company said in a statement.


The wedding, on Saturday, was in the company's "G-Force One" 727. Zero G also has an A300, which one of our readers captured at last week's Paris Air Show and uploaded to Flight's online Airspace section.

The Telegraph reports the flight cost the couple "more than £10,000", or US$16,300. In advance of all of the coverage Zero G is getting, they set up a section of their website for inquiries. If you, dear reader, decide to have your wedding on Zero G, surely you'll remember to send an invitation to us?

For a bit on the history of Zero G, check out Flight's coverage here and here.

See this great video showing a dogfight being played out by a curious bird of prey which was spotted investigating a remote controlled aircraft from the fin-mounted camera.

 

As airlines constantly try to out-rival each other in passenger comfort, we never thought we would say they reached the bottom. But jetBlue and AirTran have, or at least in the wrong--but hilarious--category.

To promote the launch of its new New York-Los Angeles route (and that's LAX, not Ontario or Burbank) jetBlue teamed up with YouTubers to have them fly on the airline and make quirky videos en-route.

In "How to Make Yourself at Home on a Bi-Coastal Flight", Kevin Nalts unfurled a yoga mat in the aisle, washed his socks in the lavatory sink and then hung them on a clothesline across the galley, and went beyond the wildest faux pas you could imagine.



Similarly, Mark Malkoff earlier this month embarked on a 30-day quest with AirTran to supposedly rid himself of his "fear of flying". (But the Colbert Report staffer undertook a similar project last January living in Ikea, and AirTran is using the occasion to promote its plan to equip its entire fleet with Gogo wifi by the end of the summer, as Brett Snyder reports.) In this episode, Mark asks passengers how he smells.




You can also watch Mark receive a shower courtesy of the airport fire department, unfurl a roll of toilet paper down the aisle from the lavatory toilet and then press flush, and many other shenanigans.

These stunts may not involve lie-flat seats or in-flight wifi, but who ever knew getting comfortable could be so much fun?

A call out to readers: have you been on any of these flights, or even regular flights where your seat neighbour got a little too comfortable?

The 100th Paris Air Show is underway and when dodging the rain, Flightglobal's crack team of journalists are buzzing away to bring you the latest news, images and video from the event.

For all the news from the show go to our special Paris Air Show page or for the Twitterers among you follow our Tweets at #parisairshow.

We already have two Paris galleries set up, one showcasing the significant history of the show in our archive gallery and the other showing over 170 images from 2007's show.

Excitingly, for those attending the show, this year for the first time we are also giving you the chance to get your Paris pictures into Flight International magazine. For the chance to get your Paris images profiled, simply upload them to this gallery (click on the upload button on the bottom right of this page) and we will choose the best images for the 30th June issue of the magazine. (closing date is the 22nd June, the Judges' decision is final).

Fliight's most recent look at hovercraft was in May 1995 when editor Allan Winn took an indepth look at the operations of Hoverspeed which used the mighty SR-N4 with its four Marine Proteus jet engines to ply the English Channel. 

Here's another feature on air cushion vehicles from 1967.

In a feature about hovercraft, Flight wrote: "One thing that is a must [at the Montreal Expo '67]from Britain is the hovercraft.

"It was suggested by various Whitehall departments and the manufacturers that one of the pioneer British operators should investigate the possibility of operating the latest machines as a public service at Expo. Chaps in sponge-bag trousers said all the usual things like 'Make it as spectacular as you can without actually asking us for money.'"

• Hovercraft in land war - part two of a discussion
• Test model SEDAM N.300 Naviplane paves the way

  

• See Flightglobal's hovercraft cutaways
• More cutaway galleries

A British Army Elbit Systems Hermes 450 unmanned air vehicle had a near miss with a Boeing CH-47 Chinook while on operations in Afghanistan, Flight can reveal. About half way through the 37s video the Chinook comes into view and grows larger in the left hand side of the frame

For a full size image click on graphic

Here are a few articles featuring Virgin in the archives: 

1984 Virgin Atlantic to up set transatlantic apple cart

1985 BA/Virgin dirty tricks affair

1986 Flight feature on Virgin Atlantic being unconventional

1993 Virgin pursues BA to US courts 

1990 Looks to phase out ageing 747 Classics with 777s and a340s

2005 Virgin Nigeria takes to the air