United Airways adds two new aircraft to its fleet

Courtesy Wikipedia. Image credit: Raihanspotter

Rapidly growing Bangladeshi private carrier United Airways has added two additional aircraft to its fleet. The aircraft are an ATR 72-200 registered as S2-AFU and a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 registered as S2-AEJ. The ATR 72-200 originated with LOT Polish Airlines, and then was transferred to LOT's regional subsidiary Eurolot before being sold to United Airways. Meanwhile, the MD-83 was delivered to US carrier Trans World Airlines (TWA) in 1995, became part of American Airlines' fleet after American acquired TWA in 2001, and then was sold to United Airways earlier this year after being parked in 2012.

The aircraft become the 10th and 11th airplanes in United Airways' fleet, composed of 2x Airbus A310-300s, 3x ATR 72-200s, 5x MD-83s, and 1x Bombardier Dash 8 Q100. The carrier also has 4x BAE Jetstream 31s on order to grow domestic operations, and a further A310-300 on order for longer haul flights.

Chairman and Managing Director of United Airways Capt. Tasbirul Ahmed Choudhury had this to say about the acquisitions:

These new addition of ATR-72 and MD-83 aircraft has increased the fleet strength of United Airways to Eleven. We definitely want to increase our fleet as this is the right time to procure desired aircraft to expand more domestic, regional and international destinations. The ATR-72 aircraft is having 64 economy class seats and the MD-83 aircraft 167 economy class seats.

United Airways serves 15 destinations (7 international) across Asia and the Middle East. It has its primary hub at Dhaka's Shajahlal International Airport.  

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Pakistan International Airlines cancels Frankfurt and Amsterdam

A PIA Airbus A310 at Leeds Bradford - Image Credit: Mark Winterbourne

According to the Airline Route blog, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) will be cancelling its twice weekly
services to Amsterdam and Frankfurt from 7th September. One flight per week is served as a triangular routing Lahore-Amsterdam-Frankfurt-Lahore on Fridays utilizing one of PIA's 12 Airbus A310-300 aircraft, while the other weekly flight is routed Islamabad -Frankfurt-Amsterdam-Islamabad on Tuesdays, also using Airbus A310s.

PIA has been serving Amsterdam and Frankfurt on-and-off since the early 1970s, and at one point had flights between Frankfurt and New York JFK.

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Photo: FedEx freighter aircraft line-up at New Delhi. One of the planes has a very interesting history.

A shot of the cargo ramp at New Delhi's Indira Gandhi international airport, FedEx Express' main hub in India.

If you observe the photo correctly, there is something unusual about this photo. Don't fully scroll down. Try to see only the photo and see if you can spot the feature? The answer is below the photograph.

The line-up consists one each of the wide-body freighter aircraft operated to India by FedEx Express. In the foreground is the Boeing 777F, followed by the Airbus A310-300F, and the venerable tri-engined McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) MD-11F, the favourite aircraft of Bangalore Aviation regular and prolific spotter, M. Azizul Islam of London. (See his over 6,300 photos here).

Many people ask why do we spotters go to such lengths to take photographs of planes? Its simple. Apart from their beauty, behind every plane, there is a story, there is a history.

The Boeing 777 freighter in the picture N850FD has a very interesting story.

In keeping with FedEx Express' tradition of naming aircraft after the children of its employees, the aircraft is named Saad, after Saad Zia, the seven-month-old son of New Jersey based staffer Kashif Zia. This very aircraft, N850FD, is featured by FedEx in its media centre to highlight this tradition.

N850FD also has another notable achievement. It was delivered by Boeing to FedEx Express on September 25, 2009. In February 2010 this aircraft was given a special livery (see video of the decal application) and was temporarily called "Panda Express" to commemorate its carriage of two giant Pandas non-stop from Washington DC Dulles airport in the United States, back to Chengdu in China.

The plane returned back to its normal livery in September 2010.

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Spotting images: Deccan 360 Airbus A310-324 passenger converted freighter at Bangalore

Last Saturday we got a "heads-up" that Capt. Gopinath's new cargo airline Deccan 360 had sent one of it freighters to Bangalore for flying practice.

At the old HAL airport we caught VT-AIO doing touch and go's.

This plane commenced it's career as 9V-STE with Singapore Airlines in 1994. In 2005 it was leased to Air India and was re-registered as VT-AIO. The plane was named after the river "Vaigai"

In 2008 it was sent to Dresden in the former East Germany to be converted in to a freighter by EADS, EFW (Elbe Flugzeugwerke GmbH).

The conversion itself takes approximately four months. After removal of all structural and system components that are no longer needed such as seats or floor structures, the new freighter kits are installed. These conversion kits consist of a cargo door which is 141 inch wide and 101 inch high, and the related structural parts. The cabin floor designed for passengers is replaced by a new floor structure with higher strength. Ball mats and roller tracks for loading of containers complement the conversion of the floor structure. Necessary adjustments and completions of the aircraft systems are carried out.

VT-AIO now bears the bright eye catching livery of Deccan 360. Enjoy the images. Click on the images for a high resolution view.

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