I hope this is not some kind of April fools joke but the Paris Museum of Air and Space is claiming that Concorde will take to the skies again next June at the Le Bourget Air Show. Previously the Concorde last flew in 2003 and has since been only available to be seen at various museums around the world. The museum claims the have a special certificate for demonstration flights and engineers have been over the plane and checked it to be OK. The report sounds a bit fishy to me considering previous statements about the planes ability to fly again and the date of the announcement. What do you recon? hit up our comment form below. Read the rest of this entry »
You may have noticed airlines don’t have too many new and original ideas and Premium Economy may just be one of them. Premium Economy is the latest gimmick that the airlines are jumping on and in theory it’s a good idea. With standard economy seat spaces becoming smaller and business class spaces becoming bigger there is a huge jump between traveling like a king or a pauper. This is where premium economy fits in offering 20% to 30% more space than economy and a bit better menu. Some how the size of these seats remind me of business class seats from the early 80’s and you got to ask yourself if the constant upsizing of business and first class cabins have been worth it, especially when many US airlines are removing first class altogether. Expect to pay double your standard economy fare when traveling Premium Economy but probably half of what business is worth, so what do you recon is it worth it?, let us know below. Read the rest of this entry »
Singapore Airlines have announced that the world’s first Airbus A380 route will be a daily flight between London -Singapore and Sydney starting on October 28th this year. The Airbus promises to revolutionize air travel with this huge double decker aircraft dwarfing all other aircraft. The Singapore Airlines configuration will seat 471 people with 399 seats available in economy class as well as business and first class seating. Tickets for first flight between Singapore and Australia were recently auctioned on the eBay website with thousands raised for charity. Singapore Airlines has so far committed to buy 19 of these huge aircraft and are the first company to receive the plane. So far Airbus has over 170 orders for the plane with Emirates having orders for 55, Qantas having orders for 20 and Singapore having ordered 19. Read the rest of this entry »
40km north of Seattle on America’s west coast is the Boeing Factory where their enormous aircraft are assembled. The complex is open to the public and offers an amazing insight into the design and construction of the worlds most popular commercial planes. The assembly building is the largest building by volume in the world and has a perimeter of 3.5km. The company offers a fantastic tour which starts off with the Future of Flight Aviation Centre which is an amazing interactive display with flight simulators, computerised attractions and quite a few full size displays of various parts of the planes. Then its off to the Boeing Everett Factory on a one our guided bus tour where you can see the planes being constructed. Once inside the factory you can see various types of planes in different stages of construction.
The Airbus A380 made a rare low flyover across Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour yesterday. The sight of a passenger jet flying this low over the city was reminiscent of the days when Kai Tak Airport was operating almost 10 years ago, so the event drew a big crowd. Airbus is wooing Chinese airlines with the A380 and is hoping the planes seating capacity of between 525 to 853 people will be just the ticket to win over the Chinese with their booming population and economy. Singapore Airlines is expect to receive the first A380 in October with other Airlines receiving 13 planes throughout 2008. When first shown to the public Airbus touted features like gym’s bars and shopping malls to be optional equipment in the planes, so far no airline has ordered these options instead packing the panes with seating.
The Boeing B52 bomber is one of the biggest planes on in the US military fleet with a massive wing span of over 56 metres and a payload of nearly 30 tons this plan is an amazing engineering feet.
There are only three other B52 bombers on static display outside the USA, One in Guam, South Korea, England and at the Australian Aviation Heritage Centre in Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia.
The museum only minutes from Darwin’s city centre and close to the International Airport has a wealth of aviation displays including a very good World War II display with actual wreckage’s of planes shot down over Darwin during the war. The Museum is open 7 days a week and is well worth a visit.
Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner will make its premier tomorrow at 3:30pm local time at Everett in Washington State USA. Boeing are expecting over 100 million viewers to watch the largest corporate telecast in history in 9 different languages. The premier will in front of 15,000 guests who will all get to see the first of Boeing’s new airliner.
The Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum is the home to the F-BVFB Air France Concorde which proudly sits upon their museum roof and is open to the public. This Concorde made its maiden flight in March of 1976 and had its final flight in June of 2003. Over this time it had made 5473 landings and flown 14771 hours. The last flight was from Paris’s CDG airport to Karlsruhe-Baden Baden where it was disassembled and put on a barge for a trip up the Rhine and then trucked the rest of the journey to the Sinsheim museum. The museum also has Russia’s version of the Concorde the Tupolev TU-144 this sits beside the Air France Concorde. Sinsheim is about an hour’s drive south of Frankfurt and a little longer from Stuttgart and Munich, it opens 265 days a year.
This 747 Jumbo jet is on display at the Technik Museum in Speyer which is about an hours drive from Stuttgart. It part of one of a few great automotive and aeronautic museums found throughout Germany. The 747 is the real thing it is a Lufthansa aircraft which has been decommissioned. You can climb the stairs and inspect the whole plane including the cargo hold which is quiet interesting. The museum has hundreds of other displays including submarines, trains, planes, cars, boats you name it- if it moves they will have one. There is also a IMax theatre, a really good cafe which serves good food and drinks including some of the regions best beer and wine and of course a gift shop which has got some great things to purchase. Read the rest of this entry »
