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THIS is the sound of two 1200 horspower Pratt & Whitney radial engines at full take-off power. Make that six Pratt & Whitney radials as a World War II-era Catalina flying-boat and a Douglas C-47 “Dakota”, and two Harvard chase planes took off from Rand Airport on a photo shoot on Saturday. You will hear the sound of one of the Harvards climbing out after take-off, followed by the wide-open-throttle sound of the Catalina and then the Dakota
The Catalina, fresh from a six-year restoration job, is about to depart for its new home on San Diego so this was a last chance for local photographers get pictures of this magnificent machine in the air. Read More…
TAP Portugal will cease flights on the Lisbon-Johannesburg route from June 1, the airline said this week.
The carrier plans to focus on its direct route between Maputo and Lisbon. Travellers wishing to fly from Johannesburg will be accommodated on short-haul flights on Mozambican carrier LAM and South African Airways.
A connecting flight is, by definition, a poor substitute for a direct flight but it’s clear from the move that TAP sees more value in its Maputo connection. It also means much less competition: instead of scrapping with dozens of European and Gulf airlines over the same little pie, TAP and LAM will operate the Maputo-Lisbon route together under a codeshare agreement. Read More…
Two pictures of the machine that revolutionised the airline business. The first, a United Airlines publicity shot taken in 1935 when the DC-3 was entering service in America, shows Douglas Sleeper Transport “City of Portland” preparing for take-off. Read More…
They don’t make them like they used to. Imagine a product that was desgined to not break, fail, fritz, melt-down or become obsolete two minutes after it first appeared on the market. Read More…
A scene straight out of the late 1930s as a Douglas DC-3 Dakota named “Tangaloa” cruises high over the islands of Tonga in the South Pacific. Read More…
Good friends of mine from the UK spent a couple of weeks in the Bahamas and fired off this postcard of a Douglas DC-3 that didn’t quite make it all the way home.
History does not relate what happened to the crew or passengers, but the aircraft is not too badly damaged, and so we might hopefully assume that all turned out well for them, if not the aeroplane.
I do like the sentiment. Of course, with an aircraft as robust as a DC-3, short of breaking it up into little pieces, there are few DC-3s that can’t be salvaged and made to fly again. Or so the legend goes.
Pilots flying into Glasgow Airport have been warned to watch out for an escaped vulture named Gandalf who might pose a serious threat to aircraft safety. Read More…
My correspondent, Dakota mechanic Brendan Odell, writes from Tonga where the throaty thunder of a pair of radial engines is something the inhabitants of these faraway islands have probably not heard for while: Read More…
Brendan Odell has one of the best jobs ever. Right now, the globe-trotting Dakota mechanic (not many of those around in the year 2010, I can promise you) is in the glorious and balmy Kingdom of Tonga where he is finishing up work on a Douglas DC-3 “Dakota” which is about to go back to work doing what it was built to do more than 60 years ago: hauling passengers across the skies. Read More…
Regional feeder airline SA Express has opened new routes from Lubumbashi to Kinshasa and Mbuji Mayi in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Read More…
