Didn’t Go used to fly to TFS in the summer months?

That could be true Pablo but I have a feeling some A321s were acquired after this.

Just crossed referenced Jethro’s and G-INFO. FCA have 4 x 321’s: G-OOAE and G-OOAV were newly registered to FCA; G-OOAF and G-OOAH were ex-LEI machines (G-UNID and G-UNIE respectively). AE, AF and AH were all acquired at around the same time (looks as though AE was delivered ex-works to AMM, AF and AH ex-works to LEI). AV was acquired ex-works in 2002.

DXB is hardly going to work as a Hub for North American-anywhere connections, though…

I suppose, but connections from the US to the Indian subcontinent and Middle East aren’t great. I wouldn’t put anything past EK. IB used to successfully use MIA as a hub for their Latin American ops and AR use MAD as a hub for European ops.

EK is still massively under-represented in a huge marketplace: North America. Using DXB as a hub for Europe – Asia/Australasia ops has proved popular so I could easily see them trying to replicate this with the North American market.

Great photos! Thanks for sharing.

3: I saw a BA A320 leave Glasgow for LHR the other day without winglets, is this one of the early fleet slated for British Caledonian ? (G-BUSE)

I think so. I’m pretty sure all the early G-BUS* 320’s were the original BCal models.

Agreed.

He states that the A330 has taken 80% of the market share from the B767. Well, thats true as the A330 was designed and built 10 years or so later, the tech differences are huge. The 7E7 will do exactly the same, take the market share away from the A330. And thats what’s scaring the crap out of Airbus.

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here. Airbus have suddenly woken up to the fact that in order to compete with Boeing in this marketplace they are going to make radical changes to the 330, both from an economical, technical and aesthetic perspective. The final design of the 7E7 won’t be unveiled until 2005, but it’s clear Airbus can see that potential 330 orders will suffer as a result.

Gulf Air is owned by a number of Arab countries. Now each of these countries is getting their own mega-carrier (Qatar, Emirates, Etihad……) the willingness to pay Gulf Air’s bills is getting smaller.

Wonder if the respective Governments would ever disband Gulf Air, in much the same way as SAS’ domestic and European ops have been split between the three countries?