European air cargo giant Cargolux said it’s considering a plan to add more Boeing 747 freighters to its fleet in 2018.
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Tag: 747 (Page 4 of 4)
Ed Force One is back in action again on the current Iron Maiden World Tour. Repairs have been completed following the damage that occurred during towing at an airport in Chile on the morning of March 12. Iron Maiden officially announced that Ed Force One has been fully repaired, and took off on Tuesday, March 22 from Santiago, Chile. The plane will rejoin the band on its current world tour in Brasília at the Presidente Juscelino Kubitschek international airport. The plane will once again be loaded up with the band 20 plus tons of equipment and tour personnel to fly onto Fortaleza for the bands concert on Thursday. From there the tour will move on to Sao Paulo, before the band leaves Brazil for New York City beyond. Iron Maiden’s The Book Of Souls world tour will visit 36 countries over five months.
Ed Force One damage repaired
The towing accident resulted in the replacing of both of the Boeing 747 aircrafts port side engines. Ed Force One is on lease from Air Atlanta, which went into immediate action following the incident to complete the repairs with the assistance of Boeing. An emergency meeting was held last Sunday to create a comprehensive plan to carry out this complex operation. This included locating suitable engine replacements, thrust reversers, engine cowlings and other required parts. Plans also had to be made to work out the necessary tooling, technicians, logistics, and freight transportation to complete the project. On Thursday the 17th of March, a Cargolux 747 freighter left Luxembourg carrying the two replacement engines that were transported from Hannover, Germany. The charter plane then stopped at Stansted Airport in the UK to collect more consignment parts. Tooling and consumables were flown in from Jeddah to Heathrow, before being forwarded to Stansted. The chartered 747 then flew the 7,410 mile flight to Santiago last Friday. There were six technicians that arrived from Iceland and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Iron Maiden lead singer Bruce Dickinson, who is the pilot of Ed Force One, stated “The speed and thoroughness of this incredibly complex operation was stunning, and we are so very pleased to get our plane back! We would like to thank Air Atlanta and their terrific rescue team for a fantastic effort in achieving this in the time they did, and to Boeing, LAN Chile, ACS and Rock It Cargo for all their invaluable support. We are sorry, though, for our fans in Cordoba, Buenos Aires, Rio and Belo Horizonte who missed out seeing the plane, but we hope they enjoyed the concerts as much as we did. We should also thank our killer crew, who found themselves at lunchtime on the Saturday of the accident with over 20 tons of equipment at the airport in Santiago and over 60 people all to get to Cordoba for early the next day to set up the huge show we are carrying. The distance is ‘only’ 1000km, but with a small matter of the Andes in between! They did it, by the skin of the teeth, and all went very well for the show in Cordoba and the other cities Ed Force One just missed. It’s quite a feat of logistics to find and put into action at such short notice all the transport, replacement air charters, schedule flights etcetera to enable us to play those next four shows on time without Ed Force One, our transport for everything. Great effort, team, many thanks from all of us. And to our promoter MOVE and ACS for all their assistance and time with this too.”
Photo from www.ironmaiden.com
Amazon Airlines may be coming to the sky near you soon. The web based retailer has announced the completion an agreement to lease 20 Boeing aircraft from Air Transport Services. This agreement will help the e-commerce company to build out its delivery network capacity. The agreement comes at a time when Amazon has been busy investing heavily in its shipping network infrastructure. The investments include a new fleet of trucks and new sorting centers popping up across the country. The talks have reportedly been going on since the summer of 2015. Amazon claims the agreement is not aimed at competing with delivery companies like FedEx and UPS, but to enhance their ability to deliver customer packages faster. It does seem that the agreement with Air Transport Services Group will provide Amazon with increased leverage when negotiating new contracts with those carriers going forward.
Amazon Airlines fleet plans
The initial agreement calls for Amazon to lease 20 Boeing air freighters. The lease terms call for Air Transport Services to operate the aircraft for a period of five years. The terms also will allow Amazon to acquire up to 20% of the company’s shares over the same five year period. Will we see an actual Amazon Airlines taking to the skies anytime soon? Amazon Prime currently allows customers free 2 day shipping on its merchandise for a $99 annual membership fee, perhaps you could enroll in a future Amazon Prime Passenger service? This service might guaranty you transportation from point A to point B within a 2 day window. As Amazon continues to expand its branding and offerings, the sky does really seem to be endless for the web giant. Of course, if we were to see a large spike back up in oil prices, this could crimp consumer spending and increase the operating costs of the large Boeing cargo aircraft.
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Saudi Arabian Airlines 747 in the boneyard. On a recent drive to Ruidoso, I made a very short detour at Roswell to snap a few shots of their boneyard. The boneyard is where old aircraft are stored when no longer being used by their owners. They are either held for resale, or stripped for the resale of parts. It has been about 13 years since my last visit here, but the view was similar. There was still a very large group of MD-80 aircraft, that were frowned upon by their owners due to a very high fuel burn rate. Of course, with the huge drop in oil prices, the schedule to finish retiring these industry short haul work horses may be slowed down. Roswell, a small town in New Mexico, is most famous for an alleged UFO crash site in 1947 that spooked the country. My favorite picture from this stop is this retired Saudi Arabian Airlines 747-400 jumbo jet.
Iron Maiden’s Boeing 747 has arrived at Cardiff Airport. The legendary British heavy metal band has a new private 747 airplane ready for their up coming world tour. The plane, dubbed “Ed Force One” after the bands mascot, arrived last night in Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. The Boeing 747 is being piloted on the tour by the bands lead singer Bruce Dickinson. Dickinson, who has piloted the band on previous world tours flying a 757, was a captain for ten years for Astraeus Airlines. Dickinson first learned to fly in Florida during the 1990’s.
Iron Maiden World Tour 2016
The Iron Maiden 747 jumbo jet will be landing at Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport this Friday. The band kicks off its “The Book of Souls World Tour” on February 24 at the BB&T Center in Sunrise, Florida.
Photo from www.ironmaiden.com
Shares of The Boeing Company have tanked 9 percent today on a report that regulators are investigating the company’s accounting practices. The investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission is rumored to be based on whether Boeing properly accounted for costs and sales figures for its 747 and 787 aircraft. Boeing has more than $30 billion of deferred production costs that it has not yet charged off against its income. Boeing had an $885 million write off against the 747-8’s cost in the forth quarter, as the company sold just 2 jumbo jets in the past 2 years. Boeing uses an accounting method called “program accounting” to defer aircraft production costs, spreading it over a large chunk of airplane deliveries.
