ANA Boeing 777-300ER (JA777A)
I love a good beer. At home, canned or bottled beer does alright, but when I am out I always get draft. Sometimes when I fly, I might have a beer and will make do it coming out of a can or bottle. However, All Nippon Airways (ANA) is taking it up a notch by providing draft beer on some of their flights.
Draft beer you would find at your local pub comes out of a keg, using highly pressurized carbon dioxide gas, which can’t be brought on board a plane. However, ANA worked with Hoshizaki Electric and successfully developed a beer dispenser made especially for in-flight use. Dry ice is used to keep the beer cold (and refreshing) during the flight.
Starting July 20th, passengers on domestic ANA flights will have the opportunity to try some draft beer. Let’s hope this catches on and more airlines will soon follow suit.
Image: Tom Turner
Capt. Ishii and Capt. Carriker relax in the flight deck between missions. From Boeing.
To be one of the lucky few that get to fly the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Until recently, only Boeing folks got the opportunity to fly the airplane. Two All Nippon Airways, who will be the Dreamliner’s first customer, pilots got to take the Dreamliner for a spin.
The flight lasted about two and a half hours, but won’t count towards the Dreamliner’s certification.
This also we are one step closer for the first Boeing 787 to be delivered and the general public gets to start flying in them!
Check out more photos at Randy’s Blog.
All Nippon Airways Boeing 747 (JA8955) waiting to take off.
Starting on March 1st, All Nippon Airways (ANA) will have women-only lavatories on their international planes (except the Boeing 737 or Airbus A320). These lavatories will be restricted to only female passengers and will have a pink logo on the doors.
Only under certain circumstances will male passengers be able to use the lavatories:
* When required for safety reasons, just prior to the seat belt sign being turned on during take-off and landing
* When a passenger is not feeling well and a personal emergency requires such use
* When there are very few female passengers and the women-only designation has been lifted for the flight. If this is the case, an in-flight announcement will be made.
I don’t want to go into too many details on why this might be a good idea, but a man using the restroom and turbulence could cause issues. Also women wouldn’t have to worry about putting down the seat.
Of course previously ANA has advised passengers to use the restroom before even boarding the plane to save on fuel and carbon emissions.
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Image from 64N21W
Boeing 787 Dreamliner ZA002 with ANA livery, flying over the Olympics
Yesterday the second Boeing 787 test plane, ZA002, made its second test flight back to where it was built. The flight was from Boeing Field (Located in South Seattle) to Paine Field (located in Everett, WA).
The flight was required since there was debris found in ZA002’s fuel tank after its first flight on December 22nd. Paine Field and it needed to fly back to Paine Field, which has the proper facilities.
VIDEO:
KING5 caught video of the Dreamliner taking off and the Future of Flight braved the rain, dark and wind to see the ANA liveried 787 land.
The issue is minor and it provided people up north to see the Boeing 787 fly once again (Unfortunately I was at another blog-related event). This incident is not changing the positive mood of Boeing executives. “The 787’s progress has exceeded my expectations for where I thought we’d be at this point,” Dennis O’Donoghue, who runs the company-wide aircraft testing unit, told Bloomberg. “I’m almost giddy.”
And I am giddy too. This means I will have an opportunity to see ZA002 take off from Paine Field when it heads back south again.
Additional Information:
* Photo of ZA002 back at Paine Field via @ImperfectSense
* More photos of ZA002 over the Olympic Mountains vis Seattle PI
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ANA 747-400D(JA401A) which can hold up to 565 passengers
SAVE THE WHALES! It is easier than you might think. You don’t have to donate money, go out and protest, nor send a letter to your congressman. All you need to do, according to All Nippon Airways (ANA), is use the bathroom before you board your flight.
Confused? ANA is stating that if just half their passengers would use the facilities before taking flight, it would save 4.2 tons of carbon dioxide per month.
All joking aside, they might have something here. The more weight on an aircraft, the more fuel it will burn and the more carbon dioxide will be put into the atmosphere. One of their Boeing 747-400D (high density seating) can hold over 560 people. Take 560 x (bathroom times) = a lot of weight.
Now, this is not all that ANA is doing to help out. They have also started using recycled paper cups, plastic bottles, and eliminating glass. They are also showing an eFlight (the “e” standing for “environment” not “electronic”) film to all passengers that states, “This flight is a so-called ‘eFlight.’ The idea behind the operation is to think about the Earth in the sky above. Fuel reduction by lightening the weight of the aircraft will lead to restrain the carbon dioxide emission, which is one of the causes of global warming. Thank you for your understanding.”
Either way, if this saves ANA a few bucks in gas and maybe a whale or two, it works for me. Besides, it is best to go before flight anyhow, so you can avoid using an airplane’s tiny bathroom.
Image: woinary