Hope you don’t mind me chipping in on this one… I have a HUGE (don’t ask, its embarrassing) collection of 1:400 models… My latest acquisition was picked up from a very helpful US model dealer whilst I was in San Francisco on business last week – any avid aviation enthusiast will recognise the significance of this airplane:

SN ARJ!! 😉
A
R
J
DONT FORGET!!! AVRO REGIONAL JET! NO 146!
Why don’t people learn the difference!

I bet you’re the sort who says “hey, look, here comes a Boeing DC-3” now that Seattle has bought out Long Beach! 😮

Andy

A225HVY – accepted, but a walk down the hill into Denham village (town?) to get a butty at the petrol station and a hike back up the hill again isn’t my idea of a pleasant land-away and a chat with friends over some airfield-fare before going home again – which, if I’m honest, is what we do most of the time when we fly.

If hes just an enthusiast, how does he get such amazing access?

Its not what you know, its WHO you know…! 😀

Andy

Why did they opt for overwing mounted engines and not rear mounted engines? Not the best view out the window for those few passengers sitting there.

Engines over the wings made it quiet (by the standards of the day) – the noise from the engines was reflected upwards by the wings rather than downwards to people on the ground. Also, the gear could be shorter than for an a/c with underwing engines. However, it wasn’t very efficient and the overwing engines made maintenance access more difficult than with underwing or rear mounted engines. It was, however, the first real RJ – an idea way ahead of its time.

Andy

LOL… I knew as soon as I saw it that it was a VFW-614 and thought “Air Alsace” – but where’s the logo on the tail??? A quick check on airliners.net revealed the truth! 😀

Andy

He’s not really a freelance photographer – he’s just an enthusiast who gets about a bit. Nice guy too.

Andy

Thanks for the welcome… I keep reading about A340s (mainly on PPRuNe) but nothing heard from inside the airline. I wouldn’t hold my breath. Seems like further A330s may be needed if all the rumoured long haul ex-MAN services go ahead next year – they have enough A330s for IAD, ORD, LAS and the Caribbean this winter as YYZ is apparently seasonal, but if they launch east-bound services (e.g India, etc) next year they’ll need more unless they reduce trans-atlantic ops.

Still think bmi’s true long term future will be dictated by its sale – some sticky issues to overcome if the VS merger was ever to go ahead but “Lufthansa UK” isn’t totally out of the question given the amount of money they’ve already pumped into bmi. Of course, if Dicky B ever got his hands on it there’d be some downsizing to release LHR slots for VS longhaul, but maybe MAN would still work as a second long-haul hub.

All I hear about the other parts are that Regional is the only component doing reasonably well right now, and that Baby bet on the name change at EMA making a difference but so far it hasn’t – they are NOT doing that well at EMA in particular.

Andy