EL AL “Draws” 747 In Sky For Last 747 FlightToday (November 3, 2019) EL AL is operating their last ever 747 flight from Rome to Tel Aviv. It’s even operating with a special flight number — LY1747.
The 747 is an iconic plane, and to me will always be one of the most special planes to ever grace the skies. It’s the plane that changed global aviation, and opened up routes that were otherwise never possible (not just economically, but in terms of range).
It makes me sad when airlines retire 747s, though at the same time it also makes sense, given the more fuel efficient and lower capacity planes out there, like the 787 and A350.
EL AL did one of the coolest tributes imaginable — they used their last 747 flight to “draw” a 747 in the sky using their flight path. Here’s a look at what they did, via Flightradar24:
How cool is that?!? It looks like this added somewhere around an hour to the overall flight.
This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen pilots “draw” something in the sky with their flight path. Boeing once drew a 787 in the sky, and Airbus once drew a Christmas tree in the sky, just to give a couple of examples. However, in those cases they were test flights where they needed to fly without a destination anyway, while in this case it was a flight with real passengers.
Last Qantas 747 jet says goodbye with 'flying kangaroo' in sky
23 July 2020
The plane left its final message in the sky off AustraliaAustralian airline Qantas has bid farewell to its last Boeing 747 aeroplane with one final flourish - drawing its logo, the flying kangaroo, in the sky.
Dozens gathered at Sydney Airport on Wednesday to wave goodbye to QF7474, writing messages on the plane's body and reading tributes.
The impact of the virus on travel means the 747 and others were retired by Qantas six months earlier than planned.
It will sit in the US Mojave Desert.
"It's hard to overstate the impact that the 747 had on aviation and a country as far away as Australia," said CEO Alan Joyce.
"This aircraft was well ahead of its time and extremely capable. [It] put international travel within reach of the average Australian and people jumped at the opportunity."
The Qantas 747 fleet has carried more than 250 million people in almost half a century of service, including Queen Elizabeth II and every Australian Olympic team since 1984, said a Reuters report.
KLM to retire its three remaining Boeing 747s from service in October Dutch airline KLM will retire its last three Boeing 747-400s in October, the company confirmed to NU.nl.
In March, KLM announced it would retire the seven total passenger airplanes that were in its fleet, a move prompted by the coronavirus crisis. The company had already planned to stop using the wide-bodied aircraft but was not planning to do so until 2021.
But three of the planes, dubbed the Queen of the Skies, remained in service during April to ferry medical supplies to relating to the pandemic. As transmission rates in the Netherlands have decreased, so has the demand for the planes.
‘The demand from the Dutch government for medical supplies is decreasing to such an extent that KLM will be able to provide transport with the regular capacity again in the future,’ KLM said in a statement.
KLM joins British Airways and Australian airline Qantas in retiring the four-engine jets this year. The plane first flew in 1989 and was Boeing’s bestselling aircraft until 2011. Nearly 700 planes took to the skies in the past 30 years.
