Amazing considering the first models of 747 were certifid with about 300tons (kgs).
Jump to postI was in Bangkok last week and flew into/out of BKK and DMK (Don Mueang). The amount of traffice handled at these two airports was amazing. The last time I was in DMK was around 7 years ago and it was pretty quiet..now it has so much more traffic and quite a lot of it is made up of Chinese airlines....
Jump to postI was in BKK recently and was told that TG's ground handling license would be revoked and that AOTGA (ground handling division of the airport operator AOT) would take up the slack. TG's performance in ground handling, esp in BKK , has been atrocious recently.. at one point they could only commit two...
Jump to postyeah,wheels belong to the steel brake version That being said, I vaguely remember seeing a 747 classic or 744 fitted with nosewheels from the other aircraft. Regards, JetMech[/quote] Some airlines who operated -200/-300 and -400s used the -200/-300 mainwheels on the -400 nosewheel positions. That i...
Jump to postWorked for LH in the 90s-noughties and it was allowed but only on narrowbodies. There was a form we could print-off which we would get the passenger to sign-off. On widebodies only staff could sit on FA seats... not restricted to flight crew. I knew a lady who flew HKG-FRA on the jumpseat.. She was ...
Jump to postRepainting rudders and other flight surfaces are more involved as they need to be balanced afterwards but not too critical for other parts. I guess they didn't have time to wait for the paint to dry. wrt to pool parts, it was common for airlines to borrow and return stuff like mainwheels. For tyres,...
Jump to poston the A380, only the inner engines have reversors. I haven't worked on them but I'm guessing there will be significant difference between inner and outer positions.
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as mentioned earlier, the guys who decided to let the aircraft remain in unsuitable conditions may be partly to blame for leaving the aircraft there as the poor conditions may have affected the viability of a lot of components on the 2nd hand market. eg moisture seeps into the structure, freezes, me...
Jump to postI know that on start-up, STAR alliance required each airline member to have an aircraft in the STAR livery with the STAR logo on the tail. SQ being SQ did the STAR Alliance on the fuselage but stuck their own logo on the tail. Not exactly playing by the rules but they got away with it. This was earl...
Jump to postAgain I wonder why they gave their freighter s this conversion if it limited capacity? They didn't. The freighters were built as Combis, and were only converted to freighters in the mid-1990s, long after they'd had their upper decks stretched. To be clear, we're talking about the internal floor of ...
Jump to postHow did Boeing compensate for the shift in CG that this must have caused? I would have imagined that you would just determine where the empty CG is and go from there. While there will be changes, the shift wouldn't that far off from a regular SUD, alsothe additional weight is close to the centre of...
Jump to postWhen the SUD -200s were converted to freighters, the upper deck floor was shortened back to its original size. This is because the floor of the upper deck restricts the height of the pallets. In a typical 747-200F, positions A to E are limited to 96inches (some airlines like LH further restrict this...
Jump to postProblem is the O & D traffic is not there to/from FRA/CDG and AMS. Any load to these destinations in europe will involve a connecting sector. So passenger's options will include the ME3 as their network can easily accomodate most European destinations. At the KUL end, the amount and variety of c...
Jump to postWorked with LH for a while. We had the A340 into KUL around 1998. Couldn't carry much load compared to the B747 (with combis) we had previously but it used so much less fuel. The A340-200 had better payload but you maxed out your volume. The loading system was so much better that on the 747 where yo...
Jump to post6. A very hard landing would break the wing spar, while normal design on other planes was that the landing gear would fail or come up through the wing. When one wing came off, the plane would turn upside down in a cloud of fuel spray from the ruptured wing tanks, and a huge fireball was the outcome...
Jump to postMy thinking is the ATR72 is limited by its engines which has probably reached the end of its design life..new improvements from PWC are limited to increased reliability.. not so much efficiency.
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aeromoe wrote:
Copy - I presume you meant to say your experience was with the '-30s' while working at SIN. Cheers.
Moe
Not to nitpick but are you purposefully forgetting the DC-10-10s formerly flown by Continental that were FMs first widebodies? There were also a few other assorted DC-10-10s in the fleet from other sources. Were these DC-10-10s still in service during your tenure? Moe My experience was only with th...
Jump to postUsed to work on them when they were still DC-10s. Not the easiest aircraft to work on but still sad to see them go. When I worked with FX (their call sign was FM back then) they had 15 DC-10s, N301-315FE. Later in the late 80s they added N316-320 ..and the final batch came around 1992, N320-322FE, w...
Jump to postSo far no mention of the climb performace (lack thereof). Pretty much no drama in the cabin as take-off was a very gentle event without the noise and vibrations of the B744.
I worked with LH out of KUL so I had many flights on them at full weights.
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re MH A380.
9M-MNC was flown to LDE on the 14Nov.
9M-MND is in the air to LDE now (21Nov).
rest will progressively followed, or they may already be there. I am only aware of these two.
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Worked in SIN in the 80s and there were some memorable airlines. 1. Air Swazi Cargo. Basically an embargo busting airline using B707Fs.. Flight plan and cargo docs were issued for MTS (Manzini in Swaziland) but the aircraft would land in JNB. Spent a lot of time stacking VCRs 2. Air Hong Kong. (pre ...
Jump to postAnother question, what hubs did they have, hubs like PEK, old CAN or SHA that are for the modern Big 3 Similar to the old USSR, CAAC was split up into regional divisions, each with its own management and assigned aircraft. This regional divisions later morphed into the airlines we see today in Chin...
Jump to postI remember attending their aircraft in the late 80s /early 90s.. the aircraft had a whole parrot along the fuselage. Cant remember if it was an airbus or 767.
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MH got the A380 when O and D traffic was losing to the ME3. Historically MH had flights to AMS, CDG, ROM, ZRH, FRA, MUC and even MAD for a while (with A330). Did the market to these points suddenly dry up? No.. what happenned was that the ME3 (specifically EK in Malaysia) was better equipped to offe...
Jump to postLove how they cropped the landing gear out of the picture but left the nosewheel doors all by its lonesome self.
Jump to postAviation has tried to learn from its mistakes, new regs involving safety areas, safety cones, control of pax flow and better training etc have helped reduced accidents. In a nutshell, Safety Management System (SMS) has contributed a lot to safety on the tar
mac.
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There were two others ordered but not taken up. Malaysia Airlines 9M-MHI and MHJ were built for BA but not taken up, hence the -236 customer code. They entered the fleet around 1982.
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I'm thinking that any tower that has railway tracks nearby should have a big red button that would red-light all traffic and alert the railway authorities...
Not a high cost item too.
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They had them longer than that. I began working on commercial aircraft in Apr 96, my first was a FedEx 747-200, N639FE. I worked a couple more into 97. They had 5 at that time. Tigers (and later Fedex) had a few 747s with the JT9-70A.. these were N811-815FT and I believe they were previously with S...
Jump to postWhen we eventually got MD-11s in SIN, Fedex had only 5 or 6 of them and it seemed that N601 and 602 were not well liked by the crews. We had to do the crew wake-up calls and most of them would ask which aircraft they would be operating and if we told them 601/602 they usually groaned. These 2 aircra...
Jump to postWas working for a ground-handler in SIN which handled Tigers and later on Fedex. We only had DC-10-30s coming to the region. the 747s which we did see were mainly charters, one memorable charter was for 2 B747s to carry oil-fighting equipment to Kuwait post the first Gulf War. The DC-10-30s were tai...
Jump to postWhat killed the 707 and DC-8 were high fuel costs coupled with less efficient engines. Noise was also a big issue with more work needed to get them legal (barely).
If not for these issues we would have seen more of them last longer.
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Those DC-3s in Columbia have them beat.
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For ad-hoc destinations (like charters etc) the some airlines will usually uplift a 'Fly-away kit'. It will have some parts like filters, o-rings, electronic stuff like switches and sensors and a spare mainwheel. Basically enough to get it airborne back to base in compliance with the MEL.
rgds
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The MD-11 had smaller stabilizers as the arm (CostaDelSol90) is longer. The see-saw analogy is a good one .. basically the whole tail is a lever.. the longer the lever the less force required. Wrt to cruise drag. The stabs also had trim-tanks...this meant you could use fuel to get the aircraft in tr...
Jump to postAPAC flying is probably the only thing that makes financial sense. Even pre-COVID remaining single LHR link for all we know was money-losing and kept for prestige reasons. I am Malaysian and I can tell you that this is very true. A lot of the Malaysia elite send their kids to Malaysia and they regu...
Jump to postTerminal 1 has always been terminal 1 and had fingers added to the north end sometime in the late 90s or early 00s. Terminal 2 was actually an extension of the eastern pier to the south, parallel to the runway. Terminal 3 was a similar extension to the north pier. Terminal 4 was constructed on the e...
Jump to postFrom what I recell they only had around 10 stands with bridges? And you only got a stand if you had a turnaround of an hour.
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Number of emergency exits available will determine the number of pax allowed. I would imagine BA and CX had low-density seating but not too sure about KL... but I was only around when they flew the -300s. Alitalia had a 17 (or wwas it 15?) pallet combi and if I am not mistaken doors 3/4/5 L and R we...
Jump to postWRT aging aircraft checks as an evolving plan.
My understanding is that the checks are initially set at conservative limits and depending on the results of the checks over a wider sample the checks may be extended (timewise).
rgds
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My guess is they'll see a few more years service to fill the gap resulting from a lot of pax flights being grounded. Freight charges are high and may even cover the cost of a major check, especially as LH does it in-house.
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Air Asia had 9M-AFD in honor of Bo Lingam who was COO of the group at the time.
I believe one issue was the pilots who were transitioning from props(pistons) to jets were really behind the aircraft.. the longer spool-up of the engines related to the throttles caught a few out.
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I've been on board a IRIAF aircraft when it came to SIN. It had a boom operator position in the tail which was cool.
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Firefly has a very lean team but also depends on the mothership for a lot of infra (eg HR and finance as well as a lot of IT support), in some cases this helps but in most cases it's a hindrance. But it has stuck to its guns in using Naviatire for its Res and DCS despite pressure to join MH in whate...
Jump to postThey added some aerodynamic aids but you know they're scraping the bottom of the barrel when they change the wipers to park upright to improve aerodynamics ! Like the 787 and A350? Why was there never a freigther of the A340. Now that the A330 has more MTOW there is no use for it, but in the early ...
Jump to postTigers did have some 707 pax aircraft and I believe some DC-8. They were a major troop carrier during the Vietnam War so the Tristar could have been pitched to serve this market. They later stopped pax traffic for a while only to restart with Metro International (a sub brand). The Tristar freighter ...
Jump to postI don't believe they did, they (lockheed) could have painted a model in FT colours as part of a sales pitch but I don't think FT placed any orders. If anything they would have probably gone with Douglas as they were operating DC-8s at the time.
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Basically the MD-11 was an old design which was tweaked for range (slightly better fuel consumption and larger tanks including a tail-tank). They added some aerodynamic aids but you know they're scraping the bottom of the barrel when they change the wipers to park upright to improve aerodynamics ! ...
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