Woah!!

WOW! Do you think this could lead to potentially permanent flights?

I believe Qantus did a flight from Perth to Colombo in the 1940s.

Hi flylanka, Do you think it will work if Qantas operate on SYD-SIN-CMB onboard A333 ?

I think that this could be a profitable route in the future, particularly if Qantas could get rights to carry passengers between, say, BKK or SIN and CMB. With the large numbers of Sri Lankans already living in Australia, combined with the popularity of routes between SIN/BKK and Colombo, I think they could definitely make it work. With UL now being a OneWorld member, they could also turn this into an opportunity for a codeshare. I have heard rumors of UL starting a route to Melbourne potentially

I think Syd Sin Cmb will be a good move to QF but SQ/UL might have problems!!

Heya all, newbie here
Call me Jish, if you wish
I have been staying in Colombo for the past 3 years, and I'm a big time aviation-Formula One-heavy metal music nut.
I would like to share some pictures from my recent Paris school trip, flew on 4R-ALC and 4R-ALG.
UL563 CMB-CDG was on ALC:










And some of the return flight, UL564 on 4R-ALG:











I have posted a detailed trip report here. Warning, overloaded with pictures!
Thank you for accepting me into your forum, I'm sure I'll love contributing here!

Regards
Jish

Welcome to Our Forum Jish.

Waiting see more pictures from the trip report.

Wow nice pictures Jish! It's nice to have you in our Air Sri Lanka forum!

When did you fly? Could you please tell me about your experience on flying onboard SriLankan Airlines. Loved to know about the Passenger Load Factor, IFE performance, Cabin Crew service, Cabin cleanliness, ground staff performance, flight on-time performance etc...

Love to see your other plane spotting pictures from Colombo Airport soon.

Nice to see Korean Air in the picture. Just to confirm is this picture taken at Colombo CMB? What was the time when you were taking this picture?

Hello there Srilankan1! Its great to be a part of your forum
You can find more pictures from the flight to Paris here: http://airlinersindia.s4.bizhat.com/...rsindia#138018
And the return flight here: http://airlinersindia.s4.bizhat.com/...rsindia#138275
I'm sorry I cannot type out a full TR here, going by the trends in this thread, it seems that the flights are summarized rather than a full trip report. But if you want a full detailed TR from me, do let me know!

Banu, I have written those in the links posted, but I shall summarize it for you here:
UL563 CMB-CDG
27th June 2014
It was a decent experience, in fact much better than what I expected! UL is no doubt a hidden jewel in South Asia, and hopefully their induction into Oneworld will help them a lot. If there is anything I have to complain on this flight: its the food, which was not a complete disaster, but slightly below par. The first meal was less in quantity, the second meal (egg especially) did feel a bit undercooked. Also, the washroom was clean in the first few hours of the flight, towards the end, it was a complete mess. Pictures are in the link..
Loads were quite low on this flight, about 65%..in fact so low that I changed my seat no less than 7 times during the flight! IFE screens were dead, to be frank. Only a handful here and there would show movies, the others would show the flight information (enough for me to survive!). Group check in was very slow, but that was due to a family who got stuck for a long time, the agent made sure we were fast tracked to check in, as a group. The crew is what won my lauds - a fantastic crew, with whom I spent one and a half of the 10 hours chatting away with!

Return UL564 CDG-CMB
6th July 2014
Check in lady was quite weird :/ but since she wasn't from UL, I shall skip this. Full loads this flight, not a single spare seat available. Food was good, but the choices ran out and I did not get my choice of meal in one of the meals. Cabin and washroom was very clean throughout the whole flight, and another set of fantastic crew members! Sure, I did not have any conversations with them because of the full flight, but they had the warmth, the dedication and professionalism of a 5* airline, no doubt. IFE worked this time, but the view outside the window is my form of entertainment Departed 45 minutes later, and reached about 10 minutes late due to rerouting (congestion over Middle East, I've explained this in the second link)

This is just a slim summary of the flights, there is more in the link(s)!

TO answer your question, yes that KE bird has been taken in Colombo, at 0451 hours. So that means the bird had just come in from ICN, and would later depart to MLE.

Regards
Jish

Sri Lanka (127) Colombo Airport by Greg McCann, on Flickr

Hey all
I'll be posting some pictures from my recent A380-hunting trip to Hong Kong.
prior to this, I attempted to get on the A380 thrice before (JNB-DXB got downgraded due to the wing cracks, DXB-JED-DXB never seemed realistic, and a KUL-HKG-KUL was booked, but it got downgraded again, but cancelled that trip as a whole).

Frustrated by all this, I decided to convince my parents to go to Hong Kong on what is one of the world's leading carriers: Singapore Airlines, while also catching their A380 on the popular SIN-HKG-SIN route. Along with this, we also decided to go to Taipei in Taiwan.
Once again, I will post links to ALL parts of the long TR, but I'll write something brief about the CMB-SIN-CMB segments

Part 1 - Spotting in Negombo, pics of a UL A343 flight (MAA-CMB), SQ469 A333 to SIN and SQ856 A380 to HKG: http://airlinersindia.s4.bizhat.com/...ic.php?t=13877
Part 2 - Non aviation pics, Hong Kong: http://airlinersindia.s4.bizhat.com/...ic.php?t=13890
Part 3 - To Taipei on the RARE MD90, operated by EVA Air: http://airlinersindia.s4.bizhat.com/...ic.php?t=13916
Part 4 - Non aviation pics, Taipei: http://airlinersindia.s4.bizhat.com/...ic.php?t=13939
Part 5 - Equivalent of the Japanese Shinkansen, the Taiwan High Speed Rail: http://airlinersindia.s4.bizhat.com/...=140245#140245
Part 6 - Back to Hong Kong on the ULTRA RARE Boeing 747-400 Combi, operated by EVA Air: http://airlinersindia.s4.bizhat.com/...ic.php?t=13969
Part 7 - Heading home, via SIN on the A380: http://airlinersindia.s4.bizhat.com/...ic.php?t=13988
Part 8 - The final flight back home, the SQ A333: http://airlinersindia.s4.bizhat.com/...opic13999.html
In addition, I also took plenty of pictures of planes, 4 fantastic sessions of plane spotting, including one from my hotel room!
Spotting part 1 - http://airlinersindia.s4.bizhat.com/...opic13903.html
Spotting part 2 - http://airlinersindia.s4.bizhat.com/...opic13984.html
(Psst - there are pictures of a UL A332 over there!)

Anyways, on to the flights.
SQ469 on 20th August 2014, operated by 9V-STV an Airbus A330-343E.







My expectations were quite high, and SQ met those. Right from the online booking, up until arrival into SIN. The SIN ground staff was a bit rude as you'll read, but other than that, they were fantastic. Comfy seats, delicious food, great IFE content (slight lag was there), awesome beverage selection and wonderful crew. Other than the slow IFE, the washroom was a bit on the dirty side. Considering the fact that an FA had just cleaned it before I used it, this was not up to the mark. Full flight, and everything was on time. The mammoth flight followed, and boy was I impressed!
I found a UL A320 stalking me while on the mammoth:


The return flight was no different, perhaps the best of them all? Toilet was stinky stinky stinky. And that stench was there just a few minutes after I boarded, rather a few seconds after! Other than that, FANTASTIC crew, out of this world food, exceptional service, on time = MIND BLOWN!
This flight was not as full as the outbound, but perhaps SQ had enough of passengers on the flight to keep them happy! Just 4 or 5 seats empty in my section of Economy. I've flown into SIN thrice on 3 airlines: Emirates, Cathay Pacific and now Singapore Airlines. With time, I shall post mini TRs of the other two airlines. SQ were clearly in a different class. I was very sleepy so I did not pick up much....
This flight was operated on the 26th August 2014 by 9V-STS.






I will be on my first A340 flight this Friday (24th October), on my way to Bengaluru.
I hope to share some positive experiences with you all!

Regards
Jish

Really nice! any chance SQ increasing more flights to colombo?





source : randeera/airlinephotography

4R-ABO SriLankan Airlines Airbus A320-214 - cn 4915 - Operating as UL207 to AUH. Photo Credit Dad

With Last MD-11 Passenger Flight, Another Aviation Icon Goes Away



AMSTERDAM -- The last three-engined widebody airplane in commercial passenger service made its last revenue flight Sunday, consigning to history yet another symbol of the jet age. The last flight operated by a McDonnell Douglas MD-11, a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines service from Montreal, landed early Sunday in Amsterdam. The exit from service of the MD-11 marks the demise of the last intercontinental, double-aisle jet made by a Western planemaker other than Boeing or Airbus.

The event attracted hundreds of aviation enthusiasts from all over the world, who booked a seat on flight KL672 to witness firsthand the retirement of an airplane that made its name as the last American competitor to Boeing jumbos. To many of them -- a flight attendant estimated enthusiasts occupied nearly half of the 285 seats -- it was an occasion to relive an era they said had ended.

"When I was young, you went to an airport and every airline had its own type," said Achim Linde, a 47-year-old architect from Berlin who had planned a vacation to North America to be on the last MD-11 flight. "The Russians flew Soviet jets, the French flew Caravelles made by Sud-Aviation. Now it's just Airbus and Boeing."

The airline, mindful of the growing clout of the avgeek subculture -- something between a hobby and a lifestyle, whose devotees crisscross the globe in pursuit of unusual airplanes -- had planned events in Montreal and Amsterdam around the flight. Fire trucks gave the jet a water-cannon salute at both ends, airport vehicles escorted it in a motorcade when it landed, and on-board meals included special sweets with the MD-11 logo and champagne. Passengers could also access the flight deck when the plane was on the ground, a near-impossible feat since 9/11.



Yet, for all its romantic cachet and sleek lines, the MD-11 was a commercial flop that sold only 200 units over a short production run from 1988 to 2000, and was haunted by a poor safety record. Conceived by McDonnell Douglas as a bigger successor to the DC-10, which was also retired this year, it was plagued by issues including higher fuel burn than anticipated and poor reliability in its initial years, which cost airlines money.

Pilots loved the roomy cockpit with large digital displays, but were less enamored of the plane's nervous temperament. The MD-11 was famously hard to land, and especially balky when the wind came from its side. Landing crashes accounted for five of the nine MD-11 accidents. According to data published by Boeing and updated through 2013, it had had 3.62 accidents with hull losses per million departures, far more than contemporary large jets. The MD-11 was almost four times more likely to crash, statistically, than the Boeing 747 series 400.

"The flight deck was the best I've worked in, but as far as aerodynamics, the plane didn't fly well," a captain for Italian airline Alitalia, who asked to remain anonymous, told International Business Times during a flight in 2007 aboard a Boeing 777, the airplane that largely killed off the MD-11. Able to fly farther and with more passengers, but using just two engines, the 777 was much more fuel efficient, and swept up the market for medium-to-large size long-range widebodies. The trijet's sales disaster was a prime cause in the demise of McDonnell Douglas, which was bought by Boeing in 1997.

KLM captain Erwin Gabel, who commanded the last flight, would not speak disparagingly of the jet he was ushering into aviation's hall of fame (the landing, by the way, was remarkably smooth). He did say, speaking to passengers at the boarding gate in Montreal, it was time for more fuel-efficient models.



The MD-11's cargo version soldiers on, with FedEx as its largest operator, and will likely fly on for several years. The passenger models have lost nearly all value except as sources of parts for other airplanes -- which will be the fate of KLM's last one, said the final flight's first officer, Michiel De Bruyne. It will be flown to a storage location, most likely in the United States, and taken apart for spares.

But even on its way to the scrap yard, the last ship of its kind went out with class.

KLM christens all of its aircraft with individual names; its 10 MD-11s bore those of distinguished women, such as Florence Nightingale and Maria Montessori. The one that made the last flight displayed proudly the name of a Dutch icon of style: Audrey Hepburn.