Blog

This is overdue:

L/N 9:
Q: 011401
A: ANA

L/N 10:
Q: 19th star in the Constellation
A: Shanghai

L/N 11:
Q: Take away the first word in this airline’s name, and you will be left with the name of another airline that rose, and fell, and rose, and fell again.
A: China Eastern

L/N 12:
Q: This is what you would say when greeting the Chairman of the Board’s daughter, using the shortened form of her first name.
A: Hainan Airlines

L/N 13:
Q: Add this one’s line number to that of its older sister, reverse it, and you have the only uniform number ever retired by Major League Baseball.
A: China Eastern

And now the next round…
Some of these are a bit harder.

L/N 14:
You could remove a word from this airline’s name, and be left with the the name of another airline. I don’t think their respective crews would get along, though.

L/N 15:
Multiply this one’s line number with that of its older sister, and you get the numerical part of the model designation of the airplane whose nose some say resembles the 787’s.

L/N 16:
Jinju and Narrabri might not be at the top of your list of future destinations. But combine their codes, rearrange the letters, and you have it!

L/N 17:
Duck.

L/N 18:
There was a band that was known for wearing giant stove pipe hats on stage at their shows, in the style of Abe Lincoln, after whom they named one of their albums. On that album, they sang a song about a lady with a Vietnamese last name.

I’ve been wanting to write about this particular topic for some time now. Ironically enough, I now have the perfect opportunity to get my thoughts on paper. I find myself, as I type, sitting at Gate 33 at Logan Airport waiting for my 6:40pm flight to depart to JFK. My jetBlue E190 is here, fueled, loaded, and the crew is ready and raring to go. So why, you ask am I sitting here at 8:37pm twiddling my thumbs? Thunderstorms have forced a ground stop at JFK, and the entire New York City area leaving the beautiful skies over Logan devoid of flights heading to the Big Apple.

Salon.com writer and commercial pilot Patrick Smith, a friend of this blog, hit the nail on the head:

The situation at JFK has reached a breaking point, and it is symptomatic of a nationwide crisis.

I agree with Smith’s assessment that regional jets and larger aircraft compete for a finite amount of space both on the taxiways and the sky, however, regional jets have succeeded in opening new markets and enabling better point-to-point connectivity that avoids intermediate connecting airports. The problem is in part schedules, but largely, as I see it an obscenely broken air traffic control system is slowing this country down. If you can remember all the way back to the Summer of 2001 flight delays were snarling America, CNN even did a big special on it. Six years later, it appears nothing has improved. 2006 was the worst year for flight delays in American history, and 2007 is expected to top that.

Advances in avionics technology are ready to fix this problem, the technology to modernize the system on the ground exists too. The air traffic control system as it currently stands is running on 1950s technology. A system that is great if you’re flying a 707. Lousy if you’re in something a little bit newer. The system as it operates now, relies upon VORs, NDBs and jetways in an entirely ground based system. Popular Mechanics diagnosed the problem perfectly.

With today’s radar, it can take up to 36 seconds to get an accurate read on a plane’s position — a long time for an aircraft flying 500 mph. So safety buffers err on the conservative side: The minimum distance between planes is 5 miles horizontally and about 3 miles on landing and approach. The result is inefficient use of airports and airspace.

New aircraft are more than capable of transitioning to a GPS based system. Space based navigation will enable more direct routing reducing flight delays, not to mention improving the bottom line and significant fuel savings. Alaska Airlines has been testing this new system, called NextGen, on its 737 and MD-80 fleet with extraordinary success, saving more than 1000 flights from cancellation last year.

The system is set to be implemented by 2025. However here’s the problem:

“The current system cannot handle the projected traffic demands expected by 2015,” Robert Sturgell, the FAA’s deputy administrator, told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation in March 2007. “Absent modernization, the consequences will be a total system collapse.”

Boeing 767-300 VH-OGD wearing the new QANTAS colors. This is the first update to the QANTAS livery since the year after I was born! What do you think?

Republished with permission, all photos are courtesy of Naddsy.

Production begins on 787 IMAX film

Earlier this month, director Stephen Low and an IMAX crew began filming the Boeing 787 Dreamliner for an upcoming IMAX 3-D movie titled “Legends of the Sky.” Set in the context of aviation history, the film will highlight legendary 20th century airplanes in addition to the
manufacturing, testing and first flight of the 787. Initial filming focused on the 787 Premiere, as well as 787 partner facilities in Frederickson, Wash. Additional filming of the 787 will continue this fall. The film is scheduled for release in early- to mid-2008.

Approximately 25 IMAX crew members filmed the arrival of a Dreamlifter ferrying a 787 integrated midbody fuselage in Everett, Wash., earlier this month. The crew used the IMAX 3-D Solido camera mounted on the crane, to capture the airplane’s arrival. Weighing approximately 225 pounds (102 kilograms), the camera is one of the largest in the world and captures spectacular 3-D imagery. IMAX movies feature surround sound and images up to eight stories high.

Back in June, this page prominently featured the first eight 787s and their recipient airlines. Flightblogger is taking this idea quite a few steps further. Early this month, this blogger learned the identities of the Boeing 787 Dreamliners 9 all the way through to 27 in an extremely unusual way.

The identities of L/N 9-27 arrived in the form of riddles.

I have since solved them all correctly and I felt it was only appropriate to share the riddles with the aviation community. Please note that these riddles were not created by me. I found that the riddles find their from origins in aviation history, pop culture, sports, mathematics and many other places.

In addition, please keep in mind that with these early build airplanes, the line number probably has little correlation to the delivery order. Boeing will be building and stockpiling aircraft when final 787 certification occurs. Airlines that have a number of airplanes in the first forty or so may well pick them up all at the same time.

Over the next several weeks, I will be releasing them, 5 at a time. The answers will be revealed in the posts that follows. Good luck and feel free to collaborate with each other here in the comments section or in the forums at airliners.net.

L/N 9:
011401

L/N 10:
19th in the Constellation

L/N 11:
Take away the first word in this airline’s name, and you will be left with the name of another airline that rose, and fell, and rose, and fell again.

L/N 12:
This is what you would say when greeting the Chairman of the Board’s daughter, using the shortened form of her first name.

L/N 13:
Add this one’s line number to that of its older sister, reverse it, and you have the only uniform number ever retired by Major League Baseball.

BREAKING NEWS

The first large cargo freighter, N747BC will return on July 18, 2007 as BOE876 leaving Taiwan at 3:15 GMT and coming back to Everett by way of a fuel stop in Anchorage. LCF1 had been undergoing final modifications and received a full Dreamlifter paint job in Taiwan following the extensive metamorphosis over the previous year. N747BC will join its hard-working sister ship N780BA on normal rotations very soon as a transporter of 787 parts as the program moves toward first flight, flight testing and production ramp up.

UPDATE:
LCF1 snuck into the continental United States this afternoon as EIA574, arriving in Portland where it will undergo bridge work for the next several days before returning to Everett.

Image Courtesy Associated Press

“Uh, everyone, please strap yourselves in, as we are experiencing a little Godzilla-related turbulence. It doesn’t look too bad, though. He usually lets go at about 30,000 feet, and, after that, we’ll just have to worry about Moth-Ra, Ged-Ra, and Rodan.”

Flightblogger has learned that the modified 747 LCF2 has changed its call sign from Boeing 632 to Evergreen 5146 and Evergreen 5104. 5146 represents the leg from Wichita to Charleston and 5104 represents Everett to Wichita. Flightblogger is working to confirm the permanent change in LCF flight numbers. Either way, it looks like Section 41 for ZA002 should be coming to Everett very soon.

UPDATE: LCF2 will return to Everett tonight as Evergreen 5169 with an estimated arrival at 6:12PM PDT.

I’ve updated the 787 tails to include five new airlines: Qatar Airways, Uzbekistan Airways, Lan Chile, Aeroflot and TUI. The basis of the 787 tails was realized last week as they adorned the fuselage of Dreamliner One.

Airlines to be added:
Flyglobespan