I feel sorry for Vietnam – I hope that they’ve got plenty of time and money available to refurbish those two ex-Aeroflot 777s, because they are the tattiest airplanes I’ve ever flown on.

Andy

That’s a new one on me, care to elaborate

Your title say you are in Melbourne, Australia. The Royal Australian Air Force still operates 707s, suggesting that they are even meaner gits than the Kiwis.

Andy

The kiwi’s are skinflints, they’d have bought a DC2 if the price was right

… says the man who’s country still operates 707s! :rolleyes:

Andy

Dunno what you’re talking about 😉

A

Why do they not use 26R/8L?

It is too close to the main runway. It is normally used as a taxiway, but is fully certified as a runway and is used when the main runway 26L/8R is closed due to incident or maintenance.

Andy

personally I can’t see this being a success as VS and BA aswell as the American airlines such as AA, CO, DL, NW, UAL, US all operate First class………..comments.?

It isn’t a first class solution, even though the name suggests that. If you read what you’ve quoted from AW, its a business class product.

It will work from MAN, BHX, perhaps NCL and maybe even from Scotland to destinations not served by the full-sized airlines. LH do DUS-EWR, MUC-EWR and DUS-ORD, whilst Swiss are going for ZRH-EWR and Air France do the oil-sector services – all routes where they could have operated bigger airplanes but chose to focus on just the premium J-class traffic. If they decide to go head-to-head on routes like LHR-JFK it won’t work as there’s already too much capacity and more importantly frequency in such markets.

Andy

AF has a similar service. ( I’m not sure it’s already in service)

Yes it is… Sort of! Four low density A319s operating to the Gulf and some selected African destinations, pretty much all of them in oil-related markets.

Andy

As airliners now tend to have instruments giving wind speed and direction…

They do??? :confused: News to me! 😮

Most modern airliner’s FMCs are very capable of determining the winds aloft and factoring that into the speed and track needed to make good a particular flight plan, but not of determining wind on ground whilst the aircraft is stationary or taxiing which can of course be critical to take off and landing.

Andy