Hi Interflug62M

What makes it beautiful to you? It is not well proportioned is it? Small flaps must have meant no stol ability. The An-10 was ugly and the An-12 is a massive improvement on that Soviet disaster. I once saw an An-12 with triangles (Iraqi Air Force maybe) flying overhead. It sounded sweet and looked rakish and interesting. But beautiful? hmmm… 😉
Sarah

Sarah, I suppose its the same with most things, beauty being in the eyes of the beholder. As with all the Antonovs, except the An124 and 225, the trade mark outer anhedral design of the Soviet era Antonovs just looks cool. I worked quite often with An12s during the 80s/90s and if you have never stood close to either the An12 or IL18 on start up and initial taxy off stand, then you just havn’t lived;) and as for the ‘sooty’ take off of them both…..just priceless. I worked an An22 departure from STN just once, and it was like entering a giant submarine! I think that it was the first visit of the type to STN. The start up and initial taxy of that prop driven leviathan was incredible, and thats leaving aside the take off, sounded like a giant airship! Thats beauty for me…….but of course, for others, maybe not so;)

Well, sort of. I worked at STN for Servisair from 1982 until 1989 and then Gatwick Handling, but I was employed at STN. Initially, I didn’t know why we weren’t called Stansted Handling, turned out that someone local already owned the name. I finished at GH in 2001. At Servisair we used to handle many of the aircraft arriving at STN for maintenance work at what was then ATEL. Most were 707s including th blue tail Biman that I mentioned. Happy (and interesting) days;)

Look out Finnair! you’ve got competition for the worlds most boring livery;) Seriously, I like the tail design, not sure about that titling though.

I don’t know much about this company. Is it a charter airline? or a corporate aircraft.

Due to partial loss of sight last December, my driving licence was revoked and I’m now doomed to mainly using public transport for the rest of my life. Fortunately I have a great partner and very good friends who take me places that I need to get to IF they are available at the time. BTW, I’m 50 yrs old, so not quite a ‘wrinkly’;) Travelling on a bus gives you a different view of the driving on our roads today. Nobody relishes being stuck behind a bus, and neither did I when I was still a driver myself. But seeing the way that some drivers cut them up, fail to obey the Highway Code, and let a signalling bus pull away from its stop, and those drivers that frequently pull out of junctions in front of them, has certainly been an eye opener to me. IMO, most bus/coach drivers deserve a medal, coping as they do with driving in urban areas with the horrendous lack of courtesy exhibited towards them by ‘decent, law abiding motorists’

As has been said here by others, the aim of these new laws is well intentioned I’m sure, but enforcing them may well be a fruitless task. Only last week I saw an idiot in a SAAB ‘cloth top’, all that money and not even a metal roof! collide with a traffic island whilst gabbling on a mobile phone. On another occasion, I saw a pedestrian actually on a crossing almost mown down by a woman using a mobile, she was too busy ‘rabbiting’ to even slow down. I’m sure many other members here have seen similar incidents. The offence of using a hand held mobile phone whilst driving should, IMO, carry a fine of many thousands of pounds, and many points on the licence. It should also carry the possibility of a life ban. Deciding to drink and drive is, in my view, making a conscious decision to put your licence and peoples lives at risk, and I feel the flouting of the mobile phone law is just as bad. Looking back at my 30 or so years of driving, I think there have been big behavioural changes in a lot of drivers. I mean no disrespect to either gender, and generalisations are easy. I found that women were the less courteous in respect of giving way and acknowledging a courtesy shown by others, even their own ‘sisters’ and are equally as adept as their male counterparts at speeding and dangerous driving. A male friend of mine was firmly convinced that the reason men had more accidents than women, was due to the fact men took so many risks whilst trying to avoid the antics of their female counterparts! Please note that is NOT a view that I subscribe to;).

Losing your licence through no fault of your own, is something that I would not wish on anybody. It robs you of your independence, and a little dignity. I was no Saint on the road, if we’re honest none of us are, but anything that can curb the behaviour of certain motorists who engage in thoughtless practices which can, in certain circumstances, result in the loss of innocent lives, is worth a shot.

As my driving instructor said to me the day I passed my test in ’81 Always remember that holding your licence is a privilege and not a right. Its a statement that I have contemplated many times since last December. As the saying goes, ‘You don’t know what you’ve got until its gone’. Sorry if I sound bitter or self righteous, I don’t mean to.

Very nice work. Those A380 shots are great, especially the close up, very dramatic. More anytime!:)

You can post more of these any time. That Tarom IL18 is a stunner. See how far ahead of the game Tarom was by putting its name on the underside in large lettering. I believe that there is a middle eastern carrier that adopted the same idea. Nothing new under the sun I guess. Someone once told me that the Romanians did this to avoid their own ground forces accidentally shooting one of their airliners down! Personally, I doubt that there was any truth in that;) Can’t agree with you ref the An12, not ugly, and able to carry a reasonable payload to where it had to go, can’t ask more of a freighter than that:)

Great thread! A beatiful airliner too. I ‘ramped’ many 707s in my time, along with Conair and Maof 720s. I’m sure that the Biman 707s that we handled had a blue fin scheme then.