A majority of the airlines registered in the member states of the EU wear the gold stars flag. In some cases its shown as well as their own national symbols and in some cases instead of same. Some airlines feature the EU flag as an integral part of their own logos. IMO about time it was displayed on BA as it is on many airlines in the UK, but perhaps thats a topic for another forum!

Really great pics! I used to do load control on the Air Bridge Merchantmen most Saturday nights on a STN-BFS weekly newspaper schedule….doing a 747 combi was easier!! Great planes though.

Are these pictures the flying prorotype or is this the static test airframe?

I really can’t see this coming off. I have a close friend in BAA Security who says that the hold bag going with the pax to the a/c is already a non starter.
But there are other ways for RYR to save money.

1. Make the 1st officer also responsible for food and drink service

2. Delete the lavatories from the a/c and include a brief “sprinkle before you fly” message in the boarding call

3. At a price include an advertisement covered bed pan in the inflight sales brochures for those who really cant wait.

4. Replace the cabin carpets with Hertz Rent-a-Car emblazoned paper roll which can be changed ( again by the 1st Officer ) during the now 10min
turnround, which the poor old handling agent will fail to make thereby earning Ryanair another £2,000 penalty payment.

5. To avoid extended parking charges, make several low passes over the airport trailing a large net to pick up the non-hold baggage pax. Inbound pax at this time to de-plane by jumping from the catering doors. If any hold baggage pax present then a landing will have to be made and the charge passed on to the sucker (ooops, passenger) concerned.

6. Captain to be made responsible for the on board booking by pax of hotel rooms, car hire and the provision of Tax Free sales after the 1st Officer has returned to his seat following food and drink sales, although if demand is heavy enough then the autopilot sponsored by Kilkenny Beer may be used.

Oh what the hell, just support your full service carriers instead before we are all out of work!!! Hang on..whats that? Only use one engine unless its vital???……………

Time to get our MPs involved me thinks!!

The Cubana IL62Ms that I used to work at STN had Cyrillic lettering on the flightdeck and English/Spanish in the cabin although later French signs appeared in the cabins. Certainly on the limited number of Interflug aircraft I worked the flightdeck legends were always Cyrillic with a few German labels on certain items/switches. Aeroflot aircraft were all Cyrillic as were most of the east-bloc carriers except Tarom which had Romanian signage on most items on the flightdeck. Hope this info useful.

I know I’m biased but great pics! I have book about the history of Interflug and it shows in several quite dramatic pictures the arrival of DDR-SEG at that field. The IF 62Ms are indeed mostly still in service, most of them with Uzbekistan Airlines including Erich Honeckers personal aircraft which I worked at STN around 5 yrs ago, although by then it had a normal pax interior. When I visited the “House of Travel” in 88 there were 3 huge models inside of an IL18, IL62 and an A310 all around 1/20 scale, there was also one the same size in a huge Interflug display case in the Alexanderplatz railway station…..hopefully someone saved them!

Very good news for Airbus. I’m still sure we’ll see Chinese A380 eventually.