In 2009, Korean Air foreshadowed it would be installing duty free stores on its ten new A380s. The airline is already the number one airline company in the world for in flight retailing! Now they have revealed the store layout. It will be located at the back of the lower deck near the rear stairs. The store will replace 13 economy seats. The Korean A380 will have the lowest number of seats on board out of all of the airlines flying it (see my previous Blog post on the Korean A380). The duty free “store” is made…
Virgin Blues
Tonight I fly from Los Angeles to Sydney. I desperately hope this flight departs on time. Last flight from Australia to Los Angeles, left 11 hours late.I had flown in from Auckland to connect onto the LA flight and was met at the gate by a V Australia rep. As a result of an engine explosion on a flight out of LA all of the V Australia services had been delayed in a roll on effect.I was very impressed with the way V looked after its transit passengers. They bussed us to a hotel, gave us a…
Virgin Blue bites the dust
Virgin Blue is no more. After 11 years affixing the sides of planes across Australia, Virgin Blue. Pacific Blue and Polynesian Blue are all becoming Virgin Australia in the worst kept rebranding “secret” (was it meant to be a secret?). I love the new TV ad: First some history. For many years, Australia had a very cozy duopoly between two domestic airlines: Trans Australian Airlines (TAA) and Ansett. TAA became Australian Airlines and then merged with international airline Qantas. Ansett was bought out by Air New Zealand who started with a small shareholding and grew that holding. But there still remained…
Amazing A380 Cotrail
A huge contrail from an Airbus A380 filmed from cockpit of a KLM Boeing B747 above the South China Sea. You may need to watch it twice.
Dear Nut – Please Go away
I sent this through to Qantas this week. (OK I know I am geek but let me geeky about something) Dear QantasThis is a very, very unusual request.I am a Qantas Platinum customer (QF 1657665). I am also a plane geek.This week I flew my 737th flight in my life. I flew my 737th flight on a Boeing 737. (see my blog post about it: http://mjtravlife.blogspot.com/2011/05/737-737-flight-report.html). The flight was in the USA with Southwest airlines.My flight memory where I record all my fights is here: http://my.flightmemory.com/mjc3000 Now to my request:I am booked to fly MEL-AKL-WLG-AKL-LAX in…
My 737th flight ever on a Southwest B737
Woke up Saturday morning feeling some excitement. My flight from Portland, Oregon to Spokane, Washington was essentially a fairly routine one. While I have never flown that sector before, I have been to both airports and both cities a few times now. Yet Southwest Airlines flight 3218 was no ordinary flight for me. It was the 737th flight in my life. Yup, I have left the ground 737 times -and returned 737 times. I have fastened my seatbelt 737 times. Thanks to Southwest airlines being an airline who (currently) only fly Boeing 737s, my 737th flight…
A330 Black Box- sorting out what happened with Qantas & Air France
From Time: Investigators have located and recovered the memory unit of the flight data recorder of a 2009 Air France flight — a remarkable deep-sea discovery they hope will explain why the aircraft went down in a remote area of the mid-Atlantic, killing all 228 people on board. This incident and the 7 October 2008, Qantas 72 incident where their A330 suffered a rapid loss of altitude mean I am very very keen for them to sort out the issue
Being in Beirut
Bombed building from civil war Whats the first thing you think of when you think Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon? Chances are: “war zone”, “Destroyed”, “unsafe”, “terrorist”. A website called Lebanon News: Under the Rug Swept features the Looks Like Beirut Certificate which notes the times “people compare Beirut to destruction”. For the world forgets that the Lebanese Civil War ended. It was a horrific war which claimed too many lives and did indeed destroy swathes of Beirut. But the war stopped over 20 years ago. Today, Beirut is becoming the place to visit. Lonely Planet…
2300 hours
A recent flight tipped me over into 2300 hours of flying since I was born. This is equivalent to over 95 days inside a metal tube. Over 3 months of my life! More Trivia (some of which can be found at my flightmemory page) 75 airlines (my favourites of course Emirates, Air New Zealand and Qantas) 48 types of plane (the 3 most common being B737, B747 and B767 and the most exotic a Zepplin airship) 180 airports (the 3 most common Melbourne, Sydney and Los Angeles) 36 countries on 5 continents flown to (out of the…
Korean A380—launch delayed again
The Korean Air 380 launch has been delayed from 10 June, 2011 to 17 June, 2011 (perhaps to put in the duty free stores I mentioned yesterday?)In the meantime, here is an advertisement for the Korean A380…..I wrote a post on the layout of the Korean A380 and another comparing my Emirates A380 experience with that on Qantas and Singapore.
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