Airlines: February 2009 Archives

Rescuers are attending the scene of a serious accident involving a Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800 aircraft at Amsterdam Schiphol.

Amsterdam Schiphol's operator has confirmed that the aircraft was operating flight TK1951 from Istanbul.

Read the initial report on this incident and read our profiles of Turkish Airlines and Boeing 757, which include news,blogs, images and historical archive material.

Here is a map of Schiphol International Airport at Amsterdam:

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Nine people were sucked to their death when part of a United Airlines Boeing 747 fuselage came apart over the sea 20 minutes from takeoff from Honolulu.  

US accident investigators are concentrating on the forward cargo door as the possible source of the cabin structural failure suffered by a United Airlines Boeing 747-100.

A bomb, fatigue failure, and corrosion have all been discounted. Nine people died in the rapid cabin decompression at 23,000ft caused when a 10ft by 20ft hole appeared in the starboard side. Continue reading from the pdf archive...

For a bit of Friday fun, here is an unfortunate CNN Anchorwoman's slip of the tongue as she continues to confuse peanuts with something altogether different:

On this day in 1965 Boeing decided to build the 737 short-haul jet, following an order for 21 from Lufthansa. It was the first time that an American aircraft manufacturer had launched a new airliner on the strength of an export order.

 

Read more and see how Flight reported the story which included a graphic showing payload/range performance, with typical airline fuel reserves, for three Boeing jets plus a provisional Flight general arrangement drawing.

KLM celebrated 90 years in business with a Boeing 737 in its retro livery.

Aircraft profile: Boeing 737

Note this image from Rex Features shows the Lufthansa 737 aircraft that was the subject of a Palestinian hijack in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1977 and is the closest to the Lufthansa livery of the day.

In this picture you see the garland-adorned Royston Pollard and his wife Eileen from Filton, Britsol, UK, proudly clutching a glass of Champagne and it's not even pub opening time!

The Pollards were greeted on 17 February with all this pomp and ceremony because Singapore Airlines was celebrating the fact that Mr Pollard was the SIA A380's one millionth passenger.

As part of the prize the pair were treated to an upgrade to Business Class, as well as a 3-night stay at Singapore's famous Raffles Hotel with limousine transfers, a spa experience, a 5-course set dinner, complete with champagne and a choice of either a safari or a tour of Singapore Zoo.

Some people have all the luck!

The fact bit:  

• The Pollards were onboard the 10.55am Singapore-bound SQ317 flight from London Heathrow.
• Singapore Airlines A380 service to Sydney began on 25 October 2007.
• The airline currently flies the A380 daily between Singapore and Sydney, Singapore and Tokyo, and twice daily between Singapore and London.
• It will commence daily services between Singapore and Paris from 1 June. Since its launch, the A380 has clocked more than 2,400 commercial flights.

A Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 operated by Colgan Air has crashed in New York state. There are no indications of survivors from the 48 passengers and crew on board flight 3407. Continental Airlines states that it has dispatched representatives to Buffalo to assist with the inquiry.

Read the initial report into the incident and listen to edited air traffic transmissions with the Colgan Air Bombardier Q400 from the ATC Control Tower.

Here is a graphic showing the approach of the crash:

Read our profile of the Bombardier Q400 and see images from the incident, plus join the discussion on this tragedy.

 Here are the latest Twitter updates on the #buffalo incident:

Qantas is only now celebrating the fact the its A380 has arrived at London's Heathrow, as of 16 January. .

The press office at Qantas in London have been bigging up the launch event for the last month which was held yesterday at the IMAX in London's Waterloo, so naturally, we at Flightglobal got equally excited and salivated in anticipation of the visual delights that we could produce from it. But how deflated did I feel when I got back to the office.

 

I videoed the film on the IMAX big screen but Qantas didn't want me to upload it onto Flightglobal "for legal reasons" which I would like explained to me.

All I could see was that the film was full of the usual marketing guff. You know how it goes: "Qantas is the most experienced airline etc etc." with some great footage of the airline's first A380 flying over some fantastic Aussie scenery. But what would have improved the film would have been awesome footage of the aircraft taking off and landing to demonstrate the aircraft's quietness.  

I cannot share this video with you, and I know you would have loved to have seen it, but alas a silly rule (do correct me if I'm wrong) prevents this. If you want to know what was in the film I can tell you, personally.

I'd like to add that in my opinion the interior of the Qantas A380 interior is wholly uninspiring (sorry designer Marc Newson) when compared with the cabin interiors of the Singapore Airlines and Emirates Airline A380. But will concede that it's premium economy seating is a first in an A380.

As the more regular readers of this blog will know, i am not adverse to clever advertising and novel ways of self-promotion. Sex especially is often an exponent of this type of promotion, as our Online Editor highlighted last year on his blog.

©Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines today unveiled SI One, a Boeing 737-7H4 registered N922WN, but i guess you will distinguish it from the pack for what's painted on the side of it first. SI stands of course for Sports Illustrated, and it features on its livery the not at all unpleasant sight of model Bar Refaeli.

Now i don't want to pick Southwest up on hypocrisy here, but for the Flightglobal reading sisterhood out there i feel i have to ask this question. Wasn't Southwest the airline that late last year banned Kyla Ebbert from boarding a flight after adjudging her skirt to be too short?And if so, isn't it a little rich to be using sex so overtly now to publicise the brand?

Before you phone a friend on this question here is a dictionary definition of hypocrisy:

1.     a pretense of having a virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not really possess.
2.     a pretense of having some desirable or publicly approved attitude.

I'll leave it up to you to decide but here is a clue on one of them...

You'll appreciate this... Air New Zealand making fun of low cost airlines' hidden costs.