December 15 - The Week Ahead Open Thread

As you may've noticed yesterday, I'll be in the UK all week working from the Flight home office. Had my first Terminal 5 experience at Heathrow this morning, I was quite impressed. 

As for transatlantic flying, I've learned a very valuable lesson. With a choice between haivng your own row in World Traveller Plus or having you own row in World Traveller, I'll take World Traveller any day of the week. "Why?" you ask. Well, in World Traveller the armrests actually go up.

I kept an eye out for it this morning, but I didn't spot Arik's new A340-500 which is set to begin Lagos-London service today. The aircraft has been christened 'Our Lady Of Perpetual Help.'

According to our good friends at Wikipedia, David Neeleman's brainchild Azul is set to launch today with Embraer E-190 and E-195s. 

A little birdie told me that the 777th 777 will be a -300ER for Air France. In other 777 news, the first 777-200LRF for China Southern is in final body join in 40-25 right now.

 Also, showing up on the snowy Everett flight line is the 3rd 777-200LRF for Air France (F-GUOC) and 1st 777-300ER for V Australia (now VH-VOZ fmr. VH-VGA). Production and flight test on the 777 front are definitely picking up speed again, with first flights last week from Air Canada's C-FIVQ, TAM's PT-MUD, Qatar's A7-BAO and Cathay Pacific's B-KPJ.

In the next few weeks we should see MSN033 emerge from the A380 FAL for the flight line. First flight of Air France's first superjumbo is slated for January currently. Air France will be the fourth A380 operator when it takes delivery of F-HPJA in October 2009.