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At last, I get to fly on Airbus’s much-over-hyped A380 double-decker routesmasher.
This is an aircraft I’ve been as shy of as horses are of snakes. It’s that fly-by-wire thing I like the least, not to mention a few episodes that made the news recently such as when an engine on a Qantas A380 self-destructed in flight.
So, when I saw it waiting at my gate in Frankfurt, I was not much amused. Read More…
If you live anywhere near the approach paths to OR Tambo International, look up on Monday morning if you want to see commercial aviation’s biggest creation of the past decade. Read More…
Lufthansa had a bit of a rough start to the week. First, the bad. An MD-11 freighter with two crew and 80 tonnes of cargo on board crashed while landing at Riyadh in Saudi Arabia on Monday morning. Read More…
Following my post on the name Lufthansa has chosen for its A380 double-deckers, I dug around for some images from the airline’s past, back in the day when air travel really was cool and all you had to do was advertise it. Read More…
Lufthansa is looking for a name for the Airbus A380, a moniker or a nickname that does for the double-decker what the name “Jumbo Jet” did for Boeing’s 747 back in the 60s.
Think up the right name before the March 31 and the airline will give you, and 49 other contenders, a million air miles, which works out at a good few long-haul flights. Plus there’s the chance of getting your name in the history books. Read More…
Lufthansa is to fly the German football team to South Africa on a special flight – and 150 fans will be able to fly along, assuming they a) have 1165 euros for the ticket and b) win the ticket draw. Read More…
That was one of the great lines from the classic film Withnail & I, when Withnail, red-eyed and boozed to the point of staggery, approaches Jake, the flint-eyed poacher, and asks him about the purloined pheasants he has stashed about his person.
In recent weeks, one might have asked similar questions about any South African Airways 747 flying into Heathrow, except SAA no longer uses 747s on the London route. Read More…
Following yesterday’s note on the Boeing 727, here are a couple of photos of the sweet and sexy aeroplane, courtesy of Lufthansa, and a story about the role the 727 played in one of America’s great unsolved mysteries. Read More…
While the Boeing 747′s 40th birthday continues to generate a mild flurry of excitement around the world – except, perhaps, back in its own home town at Paine Field in Everett, Washington – I thought I’d share this classic photo with you. It’s a Lufthansa business class seat and, yes, it IS from the Jet Age, circa 1970, so it’s not that old.
Lufthansa had it proudly displayed during a temporary exhibition to mark their 50th birthday. The front end of the aircraft, where all the happy, shiny people sit, has certainly come a long way. I guess that’s why the back end has got steadily worse over time for anyone over four-foot tall – someone has to pay for all that legroom and opera hall space up front, and I don’t mean in money.
