American Airlines Boeing 757-200 in Seattle.
If you will be flying American Airlines after December 1st and your flight leaves from 5:00pm to 5:59pm you get to enjoy their 5@5 Happy Hour. All alcoholic beverages will only cost $5 for the entire flight. Make sure to bring your cards, since the entire American fleet is cashless.
“As we wrap up the year, we want to show our customers that we appreciate their business. Offering an inflight happy hour is our small way of saying thank you,” said Rob Friedman, American’s Vice President ’“ Marketing. “We know travelers have many options for air travel and the 5@5 happy hour enhances the travel experience for our customers while adding an element of fun onboard during the holiday travel season.”
This seems like a good idea to remind folks that beverages are there to be purchased, especially during the snowy winter months coming up where passengers might enjoy a cheap drink or two.
Seeing how people are reacting to this news, some are saying this will just promote drinking while flying which is bad. I disagree. Someone who will abuse alcohol and cause issues is going to do it no matter the cost. Plus the flight attendants are trained how to tell a passenger when enough is enough. Cheers to American for this promotion.
Image: Drewski2112
I'd rather fly than take the Mayflower.
I hope everyone has a very Happy Thanksgiving and safe travels.
Although travel during the holidays can be a real pain, just remember what it was like for the first pilgrims to arrive to Plymouth Rock.
The Mayflower left England and took 66 days and had two deaths before reaching Massachusetts. Today, you can make the same journey in a few hours. Maybe that little delay and stale peanuts don’t seem so bad after all. Airline travel truly is amazing.
Panorama shot of Paine Field in the snow. Click for much bigger version.
This week we have had an unusual amount of snow in the Seattle area. Liz Matzelle wasn’t afraid of the snow and made her way up to Paine Field yesterday and got some amazing photos. She also created one fantastic panoramic image that she was happy to share. If the small 600 x 47 pixel image above is not big enough, then check out this 30000 x 2373 pixel version of Paine Field in the Snow Panorama (it might take a bit to load so don’t give up).
If you want to get your very own copy of this (would make a great gift), Liz is selling them online, check it out.
Zoom on in to the photo and see if you can find the following:
* White bodied ANA Boeing 787 Dreamliner
* One snowplow truck
* Two red navigation lights on the wing that appear to be on
* Totally white Boeing 787 Dreamliner
* Cessna on the taxi way
* A twin-engine airplane landing
* An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 getting work done
* Turkish Airlines Boeing 777 hiding behind the trees
* 13 Boeing 787 Dreamliners that look chilly
* The old school B-52 bomber
Nationwide Air Aviation Traders Carvair (ZK-NWA) in Christchurch in 1977
What would you get if a DC-4 made love to a Boeing 747-100 Freighter and they had a child? You would get one interesting looking Aviation Traders Carvair that’s what.
Actually the birth of the Carvair came more from an abundance of left over DC-4’s and a need to replace aging Bristol 170 Freighters used in car ferrying services. They weren’t just getting older, but cars were getting bigger and a larger a aircraft was needed to keep the car ferrying business profitable.
Car ferrying service was popular between England and the rest of Europe. An aircraft was needed that was able to reliably cross the channel while holding enough cars and passengers to be profitable. In the late 1950’s airlines started replacing prop aircraft, like the DC-4, with jet powered Boeing 707s and DC-8s.
To convert the old DC-4s wasn’t too difficult and was relatively inexpensive. They would take the cockpit, raise it and create an upperdeck. Unlike the Bristol 170s which only held three cars and 20 passengers, the Carvairs were able to carry five cars with 25 passengers.
The first Carvair flew on June 21, 1961 and 21 of the aircraft were built. Eight of those aircraft ended up crashing out of their lifetime in different parts of the world. One of the Carvairs, N89FA is based in the US and according to FlightAware she last flew in January 2010.
More good stuff to check out:
* Photos of Aviation Traders Carvair on Airliners.net
* Google maps shows a crashed Carvair in Alaska
* Great website about the Carvair
* Old advertisements on the Carvair’s service
* Video of Carvair
There are a lot of you out there that aren’t too keen on United’s new combined livery with Continental. The more I keep seeing the new livery in photos the more I seem to like it. Not that long ago, I was able to view the new United livery in person at Boeing Field and I have to say it isn’t that bad. Although the new livery is growing on me, it can’t beat some of United’s liveries from the past. I have been hoping that United would be having a retro-livery themed plane and good news; they will.
I have been asking to see the Saul Bass United livery to make a comeback, but after viewing some of their other liveries on a Boeing 757, I am not too sure anymore. We already know what the Saul Bass United livery looks like on a Boeing 757, but we don’t know what the others would look like.
United employees are able to vote until the first week of December. The Boeing 757 will remain in the retro livery until it goes into paint again.
UPDATE (12/13/10): The winner has been announced, see which retro United livery won.
VOTE: Which would you choose? (If you are reading this from the Seattle PI, click here to vote directly on the blog)
[poll id=”3″]
1) Notice the three separate words for "United Air Lines." This livery is from the Boeing 247
2) This livery was used in DC-4's when the name was just "United."
3) United mainliner design from the 1950's and 60's.
4) From the 1970's, the updated Friend Ship United livery.
5) In 1974 the United Tulip was born with the Saul Bass livery.
