The single most popular item from Airbus, besides the 1/400 scale model of an A380 was a key ring. Not just any key ring … take a look for yourself. For me, I sure wish I had known what was in the bag and been able to go back for “seconds.”

I’ve got a picture here of seanthepilot playing none other than the Santa Claus of flight attendants. As previously mentioned, each leg of the MegaDo run had local flight attendants (aka Moderators) dressed in their finest. From Oslo to Toulouse it was an homage to our Norweigan hosts in Oslo and the ‘cutest’ sweather vests came out. Actually the volunteers all looked so handsome in them. In this picture seanthepilot is checking his list twice … and once more beyond that because he is short a few vegetarian meals. You’ve all been there — meal shortage by the time they got to you. This flight attendant was so kind and concerned as he informed some of our fellow passengers. You could hear it in his voice… pleading for understanding. But in the end, some magic in the gallery moving some food around and everyone was happy. For seanthepilot … no food fight and he gets to keep the sweather vest to wear on Christmas Day.

I’ve had a few questions about the Toulouse Fly By so let me give you a bit more information. Essentially a ‘fly by’ is and splash and dash, an aborted landing and takeoff all-in-one — something you just don’t experience everyday and if you are the lucky flyer, you never experience except during something that FlyerTalk does.

We approached landing in Tolouse just as any landing, but once at about 50 feet off the runway, we continue flying the full length of the runway at that same altitude and once at the very end, the pilot gives it a nice punch of thrust and we head upwards kissing the sky and then vector back around to land as we normally would. Now do you see why we were all left with sore hands from clapping so much? It was awesome.

Now for some color commentary: 1) can you picture the grin on the co-pilot’s face as we did this while landing at the Airbus factory in a Boeing? 2) We had the chief pilot for Condor as our pilot and immediately upon landing he pulled his business card out and thrust it into the hands of one of our hosts, Tommy777, and said if we ever do anything like this again to please call him, he loves the way FlyerTalk flys! 3) We were told you need 3.3 tons of fuel to land as the bare minimum and after the fly by we only had 3.4 tons left so there was no chance for an ‘encore.’

You had to be there.

It just keeps getting better. Oslo was a jewel with the hearts of SAS on display and wonderful entertainment. Toulousse started with a fly-by which brought an immediate and very loud round of applause … several times. Have to admit – that was some entrance to Toulousse and Airbus.