Star Alliance Carrier, Air New Zealand which is very popular in the social media for its cheeky ads and smart campaigns recently gave a sneak peek at the world’s largest commercially operated aircraft to be painted completely black.

The airline has gotten Boeing to paint its fifth B777-300ER in all black livery dedicated to the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team, the aircraft which is expected to be delivered to Air New Zealand in late January following the completion of its interior fit out and will make its way to Auckland, Los Angeles, London Heathrow and Melbourne airports during 2012.

Highlighting its long standing sponsorship of the All Blacks who also are the current World Champions, the airline got Kieran Read and Andy Ellis to Boeing hangar facility in Seattle for a special ceremony for the aircraft’s unveiling to world. As per Boeing, painting the aircraft took just over a week, two days longer than it normally takes to paint a 777 aircraft. 185 gallons (700 liters) of chrome-free primer and paint was used and involved a total of 14 painters working in shifts 24 hours a day. Prepping and painting the aircraft entirely black took one and a half days, followed by a further five days for the intricate detail of the silver fern overlaid on it and the Koru symbol. Remaining time was spent on the finishing touches, Boeing has termed this as one of the most challenging paint jobs in it’s history.

The all black color scheme and silver fern are a key part of both New Zealand’s and the All Blacks’ identity has already been painted on a couple of A320’s (ZK-OAB and ZK-OJR) and they entered into service earlier this year, By mid next year Air New Zealand will have six aircraft featuring the all black livery including two Airbus A320s and three Beech 1900D turbo-props. Contrary to popular belief, the black paint won’t cause the aircraft to heat up a great deal. In fact, the more than 330 individual TV screens inside the aircraft create more additional heat than the all black paint job.

Personally I find the livery amazing and a great masterpiece, hats off to the technicians who made this happen with all the long hours put in by them and am really looking forward to have a chance to fly the bird soon.

Check out the ‘Behind the Scenes’ video here:

http://youtu.be/0ZkhGQ_K4Ak?hd=1

Air New Zealand All Black Livery

Cathay Pacific has announced the launch of its new Premium Economy class and also an overhaul of its international economy seating. The airline to bring these changes onto its aircrafts starting March 2012 with the firs flight from Hong Kong to Sydney. The other routes which will be getting the Premium Economy seating will be Singapore, New York, Toronto and Vancouver followed by other destinations.

In contrast to the usual practice of placing Premium Economy seats in the same cabin as Econ0my, Cathay plans to create a seperate cabin space for the same having 26 to 34 seats based on the aircraft config. The Seat pitch will be 38 inches, which is six inches more than Economy Class and 19.3 inches wide, with an 8 inch recline and will have a large meal table, cocktail table, footrest, a 10.6-inch personal television, in-seat power outlet, a multi-port connector for personal devices andnoise-cancelling headphones. Economy Plus passengers will be welcomed aboard with juice and champagne, and get an enhanced onboard meal selection, they will also receive a bottle of water and additional snack choices to include more fresh fruit, energy bar and dessert.

In order to prove its point of being an Economy plus and not a Business minus, Cathay will provide priority check-in at dedicated counters and priority boarding ahead of Economy Class passengers. The baggage allowance will also be increased from 20kg to 25kg (for luggage allowances measured according to weight) or two pieces of baggage from 23 kg to 25kg each (for allowances measured by the number of pieces).

The new Premium Economy cabin will be installed on all Cathay Pacific long-haul aircraft including Boeing 777-300ERs, Boeing 747-400s, Airbus A330-300s and Airbus A340-300s with the first ones being rolled out in service in March. Cathay plans to have 87 aircraft fitted with the product by the end of 2013. In order to add the Premium Economy cabin inside its Boeing 777-300ERs, the airline will remove the first class cabin and also reduce the number of business class seats which is really a sad decision  for people like me who love to redeem their OneWorld miles for the Cathay First Class experience but from the airlines perspective, it makes much more economic sense.

The Economy fixed shell seating will be replaced with new recliner which is a long overdue change in my sense given the fact that how uncomfortable those shell seats were, this will really help enhance the Economy Class experience.

All in all the changes seemed to be geared towards bringing in much more customers to experience better comfort abeit at a lower price point, am just waiting to get to try the Economy Plus cabin for whatever benefits that are being promised by the airline.

Malaysia Airlines is planning to start its A380 service from KL-London Heathrow from 2nd July 2012, As per the information provided at Airlineroute.net The 503 seater aircraft will be operating 3 times a week service initially and switch to daily service from 15th August 2012. The reservation for the same is open and the schedule will be as follows:

Kuala Lumpur – London Heathrow

MH002     KUL      2340 – 0550+1    LHR
MH003     LHR     1200 – 0725+1     KUL

The airline has opted for a 3 cabin configuration with 8 First Class seats on the Lower deck, 52 Business Class seats on the Upper deck and 96 Economy seats on the Upper Deck and 347 Economy seats on the Lower deck. For more details check out the link here.

Given that Malaysia Airlines and KLM have quite close links, people had been placing best on Amsterdam to be first city to be served by the A380 but now given that Malaysia airlines is set to join the OneWorld alliance Kuala Lumpur-London Heathrow route makes perfect sense and also with the Olympic games approaching British Airways would relish the idea of the superjumbo from the alliance bringing in traffic to the city. Now here is the catch, Malaysia Airlines will get the delivery of the aircraft in the Q1 2012 so you never know if they have any other plans in mind to fly the aircraft in the meantime. Till then folks who want to fly on the MH A380, let the bookings begin.

The second update is that Air France will replace the Boeing B777-200ER/-300ER on its daily Paris-Dubai flight with an Airbus A380, the change will be in effect from 5th December 2011 until the end of the Winter schedule i.e. 25th March 2012. This seems to be a great strategic move for luring customers from the Middle East markets to the Air France hub at Paris Charles DeGaulle Airport and undercut competition posed by the Middle East carriers specially Emirates. The schedule for the same would be as follows:

Paris Charles DeGaulle – Dubai

AF3830      CDG     1330 – 2300    DXB
AF3831       DXB     0145 – 0610     CDG