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Nice article on the history of the Aer Lingus B747s

Comhrá

What Happened To Aer Lingus’ Boeing 747 Fleet?

by
Joanna Bailey
September 3, 2019

https://simpleflying.com/aer-lingus-boeing-747/

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Blut2

A good short article. They really looked great in the old white livery:

cson

Was gonna say, the old livery is mint - though is the flag the wrong way around there?!

kevinandrew

I believe the general rule is that the flag should always be painted to match the direction of travel. Ryanair still paints the flag next to its registration like this but Aer Lingus abandoned the practice years ago.

Pat Dunne

kevinandrew wrote: »

I believe the general rule is that the flag should always be painted to match the direction of travel. Ryanair still paints the flag next to its registration like this but Aer Lingus abandoned the practice years ago.

They should also abandon the ridiculous tradition of naming their planes after obscure religious figures.
The Saints and Scholars argument doesn’t hold up as they have never named a craft after someone who was just a mere Scholar.

L1011

They'll run out of saints shortly anyway; and that's without any more expansion to shorthaul or regional

Captain_Crash

Jump seated in the cockpit as a kid on a flight to JFK and the captain let me sit in his seat for a bit during the flight... ahh the good aul days of the late 80's/early 90's. Over the years I flew on three of EI's 747's. I've a deep rooted love for these birds its not even funny!

Locker10a

Pat Dunne wrote: »

They should also abandon the ridiculous tradition of naming their planes after obscure religious figures.
The Saints and Scholars argument doesn’t hold up as they have never named a craft after someone who was just a mere Scholar.

I think they recycle names, and I think there’s many Irish saints so unless they get an absolutely huge fleet they should have enough

Hotblack Desiato

Pat Dunne wrote: »

They should also abandon the ridiculous tradition of naming their planes after obscure religious figures.
The Saints and Scholars argument doesn’t hold up as they have never named a craft after someone who was just a mere Scholar.

I think Irish placenames would make a lot more sense, has tourism promotion potential as well.

Hotblack Desiato

Comhra wrote: »

"by"
Joanna Bailey
September 3, 2019

That's pushing it
Hit the Wikipedia article, grab a few factoids and pics, grab a few more pics off flickr, and some airframe history from airfleets.com and you too can be a "journalist"!

0lddog

Pat Dunne wrote: »

They should also abandon the ridiculous tradition of naming their planes after obscure religious figures.
The Saints and Scholars argument doesn’t hold up as they have never named a craft after someone who was just a mere Scholar.

Pat, you gave me the idea to do a little search

First up from the search engine

https://ifiplayer.ie/radharc-blessing-the-aer-lingus-fleet/

Pat Dunne

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

That's pushing it
Hit the Wikipedia article, grab a few factoids and pics, grab a few more pics off flickr, and some airframe history from airfleets.com and you too can be a "journalist"!

You’re spot on, it full of sentence fillers along with copy and paste writing. I'm not going to use the expression “Journalism” for fear of upsetting the few remaining real Journalists out there.

Stovepipe

kevinandrew wrote: »

I believe the general rule is that the flag should always be painted to match the direction of travel. Ryanair still paints the flag next to its registration like this but Aer Lingus abandoned the practice years ago.

A flag painted on an aircraft is always painted in it's correct orientation, in our case, Green first, as if flying from an imaginary flagstaff, regardless of what side of the aircraft it is on. Some countries have been known to reverse the flag on aircraft and even on uniforms. Some countries insist that all aircraft, civil and military, must fly their flag, which is why you often see the emblem on aircraft as small as microlights.

EchoIndia

outThere is plenty that could be written about the EI 747s but that would require a lot of research. At different times aircraft were leased to or operated for BA, BCAL, Air Jamaica, Kenya Airways and Air Siam, amongst others. One machine had its livery modified for a movie role. The Alitalia lease was for a short duration to cover for maintenance and should not be counted as operated by Aer Lingus, IMO.

Captain_Crash

When BA had EI-ASJ on lease its reg was G-BDPZ and was fondly nicknamed Paddy Zulu lol

Comhrá

Captain_Crash wrote: »

When BA had EI-ASJ on lease its reg was G-BDPZ and was fondly nicknamed Paddy Zulu lol

The story goes there was a note left in the flightdeck for the EI crew collecting PZ at the end of the lease saying "Fly green side up."

Captain_Crash

Comhra wrote: »

The story goes there was a note left in the flightdeck for the EI crew collecting PZ at the end of the lease saying "Fly green side up."

Haha yeah that story rings a bell lol

goingnowhere

The 747's date from the early days of the voodoo of Tony Ryan who always able to find someone somewhere to take an aircraft.

The Air Sian lease is what really started the whole leasing business, became GPA, GECAS and the multi billion $ business it is now.

Bazzy

Comhra wrote: »

The story goes there was a note left in the flightdeck for the EI crew collecting PZ at the end of the lease saying "Fly green side up."

BRILLIANT

Stovepipe

They also drank fuel, oil and hydraulic fluid like alcoholics, needed constant maintenance and spares and I'll bet the true cost of operating them will never really be known but the flight crews, cabin crews and engineers all held them in high regard. The 330 slashed operating costs dramatically so the 747s were heading for the desert. Good aeroplane, though, and always a head turner.

smurfjed

The movie was called WHITE NIGHTS, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Nights_(1985_film)

They modified and painted a B707 to look like the B747, the B707 was then crashed, the whole thing was setup by an Aer Lingus maintenance engineer.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PquLUhy6i8U

billy few mates

Stovepipe wrote: »

They also drank fuel, oil and hydraulic fluid like alcoholics, needed constant maintenance and spares and I'll bet the true cost of operating them will never really be known but the flight crews, cabin crews and engineers all held them in high regard. The 330 slashed operating costs dramatically so the 747s were heading for the desert. Good aeroplane, though, and always a head turner.

All JT9D engines were oil guzzlers, there was an SB to extend the range of the P&W 747s which was basically a bigger oil tank.

jippo nolan

billy few mates wrote: »

All JT9D engines were oil guzzlers, there was an SB to extend the range of the P&W 747s which was basically a bigger oil tank.

The main landing gear bay always reeked of skydrol,
Always guaranteed an eye wash!

Strumms

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

I think Irish placenames would make a lot more sense, has tourism promotion potential as well.

A mixture of place names and or people who have perhaps made big indelible and significant contributions to Irish culture and society. Better then some fûcker who nobody knows if they actually existed or not, 3000 years ago, up a mountain, eating their own shîte and praying to some other fûcker who they have no idea actually existed or not.

Hotblack Desiato

Well 60-odd years ago the prevailing view was that those feckers living in a stone hut on top of a barely hospitable island had made big indelible and significant contributions to Irish culture and society!

The Radharc documentary linked in post 11 is an eye-opener if you haven't seen it already

And of course this is the era when it was unthinkable that the shiny, modern, Dublin Airport of the next decade (70s) wouldn't have a fairly large church slap bang in the middle!

Whatever about the annual blessing of the planes, I thought the prayer leaflet for each passenger a bit much! and kinda introduces a safety angle that the marketing department would probably rather not have the passengers thinking about. Ironically EI had an excellent safety record even in the prop days - maybe blessing the planes worked :pac:

Does anyone know when they stopped blessing the planes (they did stop, right?)

Strumms

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Does anyone know when they stopped blessing the planes (they did stop, right?)

I saw an article that says 3 years ago in 2016 it was still happening...presumably still is.

https://lovindublin.com/news/pics-a-priest-performed-a-blessing-on-planes-at-dublin-airport-on-christmas-day

Last thing I’d want there if I was an Airport Police member would to be spending a freezing cold Christmas morning being dragged around the freezing cold and windy ramp by some fella in fancy dress, watching him sprinkling water on every parked aircraft...

Van.Bosch

Strumms wrote: »

I saw an article that says 3 years ago in 2016 it was still happening...presumably still is.

https://lovindublin.com/news/pics-a-priest-performed-a-blessing-on-planes-at-dublin-airport-on-christmas-day

Last thing I’d want there if I was an Airport Police member would to be spending a freezing cold Christmas morning being dragged around the freezing cold and windy ramp by some fella in fancy dress, watching him sprinkling water on every parked aircraft...

Ah here, if I saw that in father Ted it would be hilarious.

Wonder do the airlines agree to it?

Hotblack Desiato

Strumms wrote: »

Last thing I’d want there if I was an Airport Police member would to be spending a freezing cold Christmas morning being dragged around the freezing cold and windy ramp by some fella in fancy dress, watching him sprinkling water on every parked aircraft...

If temps were that low, hope he was using holy de-icing fluid

Probable Cause

The probable cause of the accident was the inability to rotate the aircraft once Vr had been achieved, this in turn was caused by the accretion of water in the hinge of the left-hand elevator shortly before pushback which froze in the prevailing meteorological conditions during the extended taxi to the threshold of Runway 10.

As the aircraft was unflyable, the crew then attempted to abort the takeoff at a speed substantially above Vr. In spite of maximum braking and reverse thrust, insufficient runway distance was available and the aircraft overran the runway, deviated to the left and impacted structures in the airport's cargo terminal.

:eek:

Strumms

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

If temps were that low, hope he was using holy de-icing fluid

:eek:

Be more practical too, bless the four trucks and back inside for a fry.

nthclare

Pat Dunne wrote: »

They should also abandon the ridiculous tradition of naming their planes after obscure religious figures.
The Saints and Scholars argument doesn’t hold up as they have never named a craft after someone who was just a mere Scholar.

Name the next one after Michael Nugent