Yesterday was a big day for Lufthansa and the Airbus A380. The airline started its first scheduled flight of the A380 to the United States. The flight from Frankfurt to New York’s JFK is the fourth Airbus A380 route for the airline, after Tokyo, Beijing and Johannesburg.
’œIn early 2007, Lufthansa and Airbus jointly landed the first Airbus A380 on U.S. soil, here in New York during a route-proving flight to North America. Now we are returning with scheduled A380 flight operation. New York is one of the most important markets for Lufthansa, so it was imperative for us to launch transatlantic flights on our flagship aircraft to this U.S. gateway,’ said Jens Bischof, Vice President The Americas for Lufthansa. ’œWe are proud to offer New Yorkers the option to experience this amazing aircraft, combined with Lufthansa’s award-winning service, thus taking the flying experience in all three classes to a whole new level,’ Bischof continued.
Although this is the first Lufthansa Airbus A380 flight to the US, this won’t be the last. The airline has already announced their plans to fly from Frankfurt to San Fransisco starting on May 10, 2011. According to ATI and Flight Global, the airline states the recent issues with the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines will not affect the delivery schedule of the A380. The airline plans to increase their A380 fleet to eight by mid-summer.
With increasing the number of A380’s and being the first customer of the Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental, Lufthansa is quickly working on having one of the best aircraft fleets in the world.
Currently there aren’t too many Airbus A380 flights to and from the US. Dan Jones with the site Route Watch, walked me through the current flights:
JFK in New York:
Emirates from Dubai (DXB) as UAE201 daily
Lufthansa from Frankfurt (FRA) as DLH400 not daily, only A380-800 on Mon and Fri after March 27
Air France from Paris (CDG) as AFR006 not daily, Tue and Wed are 777-300ER (77W)
Korean to be 3x weekly starting in August going to daily in September as KAL81
LAX in Los Angeles:
Qantas from Sydney (SYD) as QFA11 daily
Singapore starting March 27 will upgrade SIA11 SIN-NRT-LAX to the A380
Come see a Dreamlifter up close at the Future of Flight.
With the unveiling of the Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental, some of your favorite aviation journalists are all in Seattle. What better time to have a little TweetUp? What the heck is a TweetUp you ask? It is an in-person meeting of like-minded people from Twitter getting together to hang out. This TweetUp still start at about 3pm and go for about an hour. Come say hello to cool folks like Jon Ostrower (Flight Blogger) and others. We will also get VIP access to take photos of the Dreamlifter parked next to the Future of Flight.
Although many of the media folks will be busy writing up stories and posting photos on the Boeing 747-8I earlier in the day on Sunday, if you want to arrive early to Paine Field, you can also check out the new MiG 29 that is housed at the Historic Flight. Unfortunately, all the other great aviation places at Paine Field will be closed on Sunday, but the Future of Flight and Historic Flight should keep you entertained enough.
No need to sign up, just show up in the Future of Flight lobby at 3pm (directions). Bring your camera and your mobile device to Tweet — see you there!
Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 777-200LR (ET-ANP) at Paine Field. Click for more photos.
Ah, the life of waiting for a first flight in Seattle: cold, rain, wind, but no Boeing 787 Dreamliner. ZA102, the ninth Dreamliner, was set to take off for the first time today, but it has been pushed until at least tomorrow, Tuesday. The engines started up for a while, but then shut down and the left cowl was opened up. This didn’t mean Paine Field was short of any action this morning. There were two Boeing 777’s that took off, one Boeing 747-8 (BOE503) and a few Ryanair Boeing 737’s that did touch and goes.
I hope everyone had a great holiday. I know many of you have enjoyed some much needed. In case you weren’t able to read the blog for the last week, I wanted to quickly catch you up on what you might have missed:
China Airlines Boeing 747-400 (B-18210) with blue Boeing livery.
The new full Boeing livery is one of my favorites. Even though I understand why Boeing is not painting all their test Boeing 747-8’s and 787’s with the full livery (cost, time, weight), I wish it was different. At least we have been able to enjoy the livery on the Dreamliner.
All the way back in 2004, Boeing delivered a Boeing 747-400 with a special livery to China Airlines. It has the blue-Boeing livery with the China Airlines tail. It was the first 747 to offer the new Boeing Signature Interior.
Today the aircraft (B-18210) still flies with the same livery. Check out photos of the aircraft on Airliners.net.
