what became of the 3 Aer Lingus 747s ?

mikedublin · 17-03-2009 11:32am #1

Anyone know what became of the 3 Aer Lingus 747s ? I know they were phased out in the mid 90's, but just wondering where they ended up.

pclancy · 17-03-2009 12:05pm

EI-BED

EI-ASI Scrapped 2002 after retiring from Air Kabo

EI-ASJ apparantly still in storage in the US.

Nforce · 17-03-2009 1:24pm

Pity to see the old birds in that state.............some enterprising soul should have bought them up and did something similar to THIS

kelle · 19-03-2009 5:50pm

I remember one was named Padraig (The one that brought the pope to Ireland in 1979 according to my father RIP), another Colmcille.
Sad to see the first photo, I thought it was a trick photo at first!

roundymac · 24-04-2011 4:30pm

Nforce wrote: »

Pity to see the old birds in that state.............some enterprising soul should have bought them up and did something similar to THIS

I flew on this jet fro Cork to Cardiff for the Heineken Cup final in 2002. It's an ex Tower Air machine, it was fairly clapped out, some toilets not working, upholstery in tatters, and generally grotty in appearence. On the return leg the pilot announced as we were taxing that we would shortly be on our way to Shannon

. Liz from Dawson travel went running up the plane to a stewardess, we had to make an about turn and return to the terminal. Itseems that they were to do a charter to SNN after us but the flight crew got order mixed up. After an half hour we got airbourne and landed saftly much to the relief of everyone. I hope that hostel is better run than Transjet. I heard some horror stories about them afterwards. They flew a number of charters to Japan for 2002 world cup including one with the WAGS of the Irish team, they had to make an emergency landing at Stockholm on the way( not sure why).:eek:

CaptainSkidmark · 24-04-2011 5:00pm

roundymac wrote: »

they had to make an emergency landing at Stockholm on the way( not sure why).:eek:

To turn it into a hotel!

roundymac · 24-04-2011 5:07pm

CaptainSkidmark wrote: »

To turn it into a hotel!

To patch it up to get to japan. It was later in the year when Transjet went bankrupt.:mad:

knockon · 24-04-2011 9:52pm

kelle wrote: »

I remember one was named Padraig (The one that brought the pope to Ireland in 1979 according to my father RIP), another Colmcille.
Sad to see the first photo, I thought it was a trick photo at first!

EI-ASI (St. Columcille) brought the Pope the Ireland - It was temporarily named St Patrick for the Papal journey (your dad was correct) which was on the hull of EI-ASJ which to the best of my knowlege was out on lease at the time. EI-BED was St. Kieran

Oscar Bravo · 24-04-2011 10:18pm

Photos of some old birds in here http://irish-airliners.blogspot.com/2009/03/ei-att-dc7-aer-turas.html

David086 · 24-04-2011 10:29pm

Just looking at some of those photos, why were some Aer Lingus aircraft painted all white? Was it quicker to just get the out of the factory?

BuffyBot · 24-04-2011 11:33pm

Many of the aircraft were leased out to other airlines, so you often see pics of interim liveries on the old EI planes, as sometimes the would be repainted into the other airlines colour scheme,, but not repainted back to the full EI scheme as the plane may have been needed for flights or was due to be released out again.

Oscar Bravo · 25-04-2011 12:09am

I dont think I ever recall seeing EI-CAL.Was she leased for long?

Dacian · 25-04-2011 1:32am

EI operated in a hugely seasonal market in the 1970-1980s. Thus in winter up to 40% of their fleet could be on lease. Sometimes they leased aircraft for years to Africa,Asia, S.America. It was the only way for them to make money at the time. (Guiness Peat Aviation[GPA] was an early pioneer in aircraft leasing, set up by Tony Ryan, formerly an employee of EI)

So you could have EI aircraft returning and going back into service with white of hybrid liveries evident. There are pics of an EI B767 in Air Aruba colours with a shamrock on the tail. These system of leasing also messed up the naming system. (Which has been in place since July 1946)

Examples:
hybrid B747- http://www.flickr.com/photos/namcys11/4924844608/
White B747- http://www.flickr.com/photos/40086110@N08/4845993477/
B767 in Air Aruba colours- http://www.flickr.com/photos/53277566@N06/5651260222/

Knockon is correct that -ASI was renamed St.Patrick to be ready to carry the Pope for his visit. (First airline other than Alitalia)

Info taken from "Shamrocks from Seattle" (Published by the Irish Air Letter) And airframes.org.

EI-ASI; 1971-79 Colmcille, 79-94 St.Patrick, 1994 Oliver Plunkett
EI-ASJ; 1971-75 Patrick, 81-88 Oliver Plunkett, 1995 Maeve.
EI-BED; 1979-94 Ciaran.
EI-CAL; March 1991-June 1993 (spent a year with Air Aruba during this time)

Am not sure what happened in the gap of 1975-79 with no Patrick in the fleet. As I know that no B707's were named that.

knockon · 25-04-2011 3:09am

Dacian wrote: »

Knockon is correct that -ASI was renamed St.Patrick to be ready to carry the Pope for his visit. (First airline other than Alitalia)
.

Not sure Dacian - I remember reading that Avianca brought Pope to Colombia before A.L.

pclancy · 25-04-2011 6:45am

What was on the upper deck in those days? Just a crew rest or did they have a lounge/bar area of some kind? 3 windows must mean its too small to have a first class passenger section up there.

knockon · 25-04-2011 8:56am

pclancy wrote: »

What was on the upper deck in those days? Just a crew rest or did they have a lounge/bar area of some kind? 3 windows must mean its too small to have a first class passenger section up there.

12 premier class seats and 1 trolley dolly. No crew rest - longest flight then was SNN to ORD AFAIR 3 Flight crew - The 747-100 had a F/E and in the case of Aer Lingus the F/E was a Pilot.

Le_Dieux · 25-04-2011 9:11am

Hi

Just discovered this thread, and love it, as one of my passions is travelling, and the civil aviation sector in particular.

Don't know if any of You are aware of this or not, but the current edition of 'Airliner World' has a feature of 75 years of Aer Lingus, and some great photos included from page 44 to 48.

Tenger · 25-04-2011 11:32am

Le_Dieux wrote: »

Hi

Just discovered this thread, and love it, as one of my passions is travelling, and the civil aviation sector in particular.

Don't know if any of You are aware of this or not, but the current edition of 'Airliner World' has a feature of 75 years of Aer Lingus, and some great photos included from page 44 to 48.

To be blunt......that's a piece of lazy writting. Reads as if it was written at least 5 years ago and just re-hashed for this issue. The last 2 paragraphs make mention of EI joining OneWorld in 2003, of EI 'currently having a mixed Boeing/Airbus fleet of 38 aircraft', 'that they are 'repositioning themselves as a sort of LCC' and that 'the future looks bright'.

No mention at all of anything from the last 5 years, no mention of leaving O/W, no mention of DUB-DXB, no mention of Mueller, no mention of A350 order, no mention of Non ROI bases, no mention of the UA/EI codeshare or the IAD-MAD joint venture, no mention of Jetblue codeshare, no mention of the move to T2............not even a pic of a EI A330!!!!

Dacian · 25-04-2011 11:55am

knockon wrote: »

Not sure Dacian - I remember reading that Avianca brought Pope to Colombia before A.L.

I was incorrect in my previous post. Tradition was that Alitalia carried the pontiff from Italy, then the national airline carried him onwards. SO EI were not the first airline to carry the Pope. However EI were the first airline to carry him from Rome to Dublin and then afterwards onwards SNN-BOS.

Info taken from 'Flight of the Iolar':
It seems Alitalia were furious and got an Archbishop to try to intercede on their behalf 2 weeks before the visit.
EI-ASI was repainted as St.Patrick. EI placed a B707 on standby in Rome in case of a technical problem with -ASI. Inflight it used the callsign 'Aer Lingus 1'.
Sep 29 FCO-DUB, Oct 1 SNN-BOS.

This book also remarks that both -ASI and -ASJ used the names Patrick and Colmcille. -ASJ taking on Colmcille after returning from lease as -ASI had been renamed St.Patrick for the Papal visit.

knockon · 25-04-2011 1:09pm

Great thread ....brings back memories

1. Going SNN - JFK "upstairs" - 12 people in premier and 9 were non rev's (staff) - stuck out like sore thumbs with suits and ties. The beverage trolley drained of beer. Free "Inisfree" aftershave in the upstairs lav.

2. Opening the Lwr 41 (e & e bay hatch aft of the nose gear) to retrieve all kinds if stuff that guys were sending up and down from DUB-SNN. If you wanted to send mostly work related stuff and did'nt want to go through the hassle of putting it on in cargo or filling out paperwork. One day a guy in M & E (EI Maintenance) called me " the 105 (EI-105) has AOG parts in the Lwr 41". It was his wifes Krups food processor for repair in the Limerick plant.
Imagine that kind of security breaches going on today? The area down there was huge.

3. The skipper on 1 747 trip out of BOS allowing 2 of us to ride in the cockpit jump seats as the flight was full (not all of them were that facilitating).

Great memories of those days of the 747.

Run_to_da_hills · 25-04-2011 2:37pm

Aer Lingus could have got many more years usage out of these planes only for that stupid unnecessary Shannon stop over. Even with this these planes still had a fewer number of landings and take offs than other 747's at the time. .

knockon · 25-04-2011 2:58pm

Unfortunately they also had hugely inefficiently power plants. The JT9D-7A's were guzzlers and the '74's could only carry half the LD3's that the a330 can carry. There was a crew in DUB called the BTR crew. Boeing Turn Around - their primary purpose was to keep those 3 a/c flying - that in itself was a prohibitive cost. My point - whether the SNN stop was there or not these 74's were going. This was also the same company that purchased 2 767's for a route that was never going to happen.

Bearcat · 25-04-2011 4:56pm

knockon wrote: »

Unfortunately they also had hugely inefficiently power plants. The JT9D-7A's were guzzlers.

Just muddying the waters here......EIN had hybrid 7A's......a total bastardization of an engine, with the original N1 fan dimensions but the N2 core was of later models. This hybrid set up was unique to EIN alone I'm aware......any engineers out there willing to give us the full spec?

And yes they guzzled juice.....90 ton-100 ton would'nt be unheard of as a fuel load to JFK form DUB whereas the the 330 with 324 pax, more freight LD3 capacity than the 747-100.....your looking at say 44tons of juice tO jfk......do the maths and it easy to see how over night EIN halved their costs on the Atlantic.......still the 747 will always be queen of the skies in my eyes.....likewise there was no sound like the sound of those 4 JT9's at full chat on a take off roll.....immense roar of those engines....

these are RB211's at full chat but the old P&W's had a similar drone......the memories!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF-FF6JVBAw

Blue Punto · 25-04-2011 7:06pm

Tenger wrote: »

To be blunt......that's a piece of lazy writting. Reads as if it was written at least 5 years ago and just re-hashed for this issue. The last 2 paragraphs make mention of EI joining OneWorld in 2003, of EI 'currently having a mixed Boeing/Airbus fleet of 38 aircraft', 'that they are 'repositioning themselves as a sort of LCC' and that 'the future looks bright'.

No mention at all of anything from the last 5 years, no mention of leaving O/W, no mention of DUB-DXB, no mention of Mueller, no mention of A350 order, no mention of Non ROI bases, no mention of the UA/EI codeshare or the IAD-MAD joint venture, no mention of Jetblue codeshare, no mention of the move to T2............not even a pic of a EI A330!!!!

Couldn't have said it better myself

Was very unimpressed

Dacian · 25-04-2011 11:09pm

knockon wrote: »

Unfortunately they also had hugely inefficiently power plants. The JT9D-7A's were guzzlers and the '74's could only carry half the LD3's that the a330 can carry......

I read (in Shamrocks from Seattle) that on 1 occasion a captain of a max weight B741 declined ATC clearance over the Wicklow Mt after take-off, as he was unsure if the engines would allow him to clear them sufficiently.

Bearcat · 25-04-2011 11:14pm

I read (in Flight of the Iolar) that on 1 occasion a captain refused ATC clearance over the Wicklow Mt after take-off, as he was unsure if the engines would allow him to clear them sufficiently.

is this an adults or kiddies forum?

Oscar Bravo · 25-04-2011 11:16pm

Not a 747,but the sound of these engines at Knock were somthing!!(and the smoke) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO6XitnJnDs

Dacian · 25-04-2011 11:35pm

Bearcat wrote: »

is this an adults or kiddies forum?

Your point being?
I'm not repeating gossip or urban legend..........I'm referencing a book that was written by a respected source.

I in not way wanted to infer any issue with safety in relation to these aircraft. My post said 'clear them sufficiently', I made no claim of the aircraft being unable to clear them at all. I have full confidence in the EI maintenance/operations record, both current and historic.

kona · 25-04-2011 11:46pm

Oscar Bravo wrote: »

Not a 747,but the sound of these engines at Knock were somthing!!(and the smoke) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO6XitnJnDs

All the obvious benefits of modern engines aside, those old skool Low bypass Engines were just fantastic. Im annoyed I never got a flight on a 707, Im fascinated by them for some reason haha

kona · 25-04-2011 11:50pm

Dacian wrote: »

Your point being?
I'm not repeating gossip or urban legend..........I'm referencing a book that was written by an informed person and approved by EI at the time.

I in not way wanted to infer any issue with safety in relation to these aircraft. My post said 'clear them sufficiently', I made no claim of the aircraft being unable to clear them at all. I have full confidence in the EI maintenance/operations record, both current and historic.

The Iolar was a 1920s design, Im sure they had issues with the fuelling at certain altitudes, not like they could change the jets or needles in the carbs mid flight. Doesnt suprise or concern me that story.

L1011 · 26-04-2011 12:05am

kona wrote: »

The Iolar was a 1920s design, Im sure they had issues with the fuelling at certain altitudes, not like they could change the jets or needles in the carbs mid flight. Doesnt suprise or concern me that story.

The book he's referring to covers more than just the era they used Iolar; so I'd assume he was referring to a 747...

what became of the 3 Aer Lingus 747s ?

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