Monday, June 24, 2013

Shot of the day: 4 of a kind

This is a rare sight at LAX nowadays: Four passenger B747s in a row at the TBIT

9 comments:

  1. It's really surprising how fast things happen. Air France, one of the biggest users, has only a handful left. Singapore Airlines, all gone - except for Cargo, which is a separate company. Japan Airlines - all gone. All Nippon - just a couple of domestics left.
    It seems the only significant fleets of passenger 747-400s left are in the hands of airlines that fly their aircraft for the entire economic life, like British Airlines and Lufthansa.
    Many European airlines, even if they operated the Classic, never got on the 747-400 bandwagon, like SAS, Swissair, Aer Lingus or SABENA, or only bought a handful, like Iberia or Alitalia.
    It still seems weird to see a 'modern' aircraft like the 747-400 of the A320 seeing scrapped. Or I'm just getting old.

    --Filip

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    1. Yes, I can remember Air France, Singapore, Japan and All Nippon B744s at LAX. We also used to see EVA B744s in passenger service, but now the only ones we get at LAX are freighters. Besides the airlines mentioned or seen in the photo, we still get Asiana B744s in both passenger and cargo roles. Air China's passenger service at LAX is just about all in B773s now, but they did have a B744 here within the last couple of months, and their freighters are B744s. The newest passenger B744 operator at LAX is TransAero, from Russia. They've come in with a B744, B772, and a B773. We get several Qantas B744s each day, along with one apiece (usually) from Phillipines and Fiji, but it's been a while since I've seen a New Zealand B744. We also still see United B744s, however it's been quite some time since I remember seeing a Delta (nee Northwest) B744.

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    2. Qantas is the only operator of the 747-400ER, I think these will be in service for some time. They only have 6 though. The first one was delivered in 2002.
      -Filip

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  2. The NZ 744s are now AKL-SFO only, and they are to be withdrawn soon.

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  3. You guys are a wealth of information - thanks!

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  4. You should see only 1 QF 744 daily - QF15/16 BNE-LAX-BNE

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    1. Pretty sure we get at least two - QFA107/108 YSSY-LAX-JFK are generally B744s this time of year as well.

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  5. Looking through my files, I caught a KLM 747 in Sept (same day that NASA came to visit), and Flightaware says that AMS-LAX is still flown using the 747.

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    1. Yes, KLM still uses B744s on their LAX service. In fact, the last few days, we've gotten two of them - up until now the additional flight has been an MD11.

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