I am not surprised at Blu1, they are nothing but a regional for SAS (formerly SAS Air Botnia). The only surprising of them joining the alliance is that they do it under their own name, instead of under the SAS name.

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My name is Peter ten Thije ook genoemd Boonkkamp (don’t ask), so tenthije for short.

congrats! Please continue posting pics like those!

The A340 is indeed a slow climber. That does not usually matter for very long range, but on short/medium range the 777 will beat it. It may burn up more fuel on take-off but it gets faster to the most efficient cruise level thus offsetting the added expense.

As for economics. That is just impossible to say. There are too many variables to say that A is better than B (or vice versa). What routes are being flown, weight, cargo, hot&high requirement, ETOPS requirement and so on and so on.

Arming yourself is only going to make yourself a target. It may be less likely you are going to be attacked, but once you are it will be much more violent. Besides, how can you hide a bat in a way that it will deter the muggers without security seeing it? That’s just ridiculous.

My advice would be to give the whole lot away, and let the insurance company pay up. You can get special insurance for cameras/lenses/binos which won’t cost you a fortune.

Having said that, a tripod/monopod should settle any issues. 😉 (just joking, do not try this at home or at the airport.)

BASE air was a Dutch airline based at Rotterdam and I believe also Eindhoven. They went bankrupt 2 years ago.