My A-Z of aviation last year was quite popular, and I’ve had an awesome year in aviation, so I thought I would do this post again for 2023. I’ve had to omit quite a lot of interesting aircraft and sights from this post, but this list should be interesting nonetheless.
A is for Aegean Airlines
Of the many airlines beginning with A that I photographed this year, Greece’s national airline Aegean Airlines was one of the most interesting.
After considering a few ways to recap my first year of aviation blogging/photography I have decided to go with this A-Z list, I hope you enjoy!
Although not the best lighting I was relatively pleased with this photo of Air New Zealand A321neo ZK-NNA bearing the stunning All-Blacks livery.
Seeing this Queen of the Skies at Auckland was too awesome to not include!
Wonderful to see the seasonal freight flights back this Summer!
This awesome looking plane belonging to RedJet aviation was parked up at HBA in early December.
After my blog post about the Par Avion Southwest wilderness day trip I took, Managing Director of Par Avion Shannon Wells very, very kindly offered to take me on a tour of Cambridge Aerodrome, the small privately owned airfield right next to YMHB which Par Avion operate out of, along with many privately owned GAAs (general aviation aircraft). I immediately accepted his offer, and this was my experience.
After arriving at the terminal, where you would also wait if you were flying with Par Avion, Shannon came over and introduced himself before starting the tour. The first place he took us to was the monitoring room, where one screen monitors the weather patterns around Tasmania, and the other monitors all Par Avion aircraft currently in the air.
Something a bit different but I thought this could be an interesting post, so here we go….
But first a brief history on the 717
The story of the Boeing 717 dates all the way back to 1963, when Douglas Aircraft built the Douglas DC-9, a small plane with twin rear mounted engines. Fast forward to 1980, by which time Douglas had merged with McDonnell Aircraft, and the 2nd generation McDonnell Douglas MD-80 entered service, similar to the DC-9 but longer with a larger fuel capacity. 9 years later and the McDonnell Douglas MD-90 comes into service, a modernised version of the MD-80.
The next planned plane in this range was the MD-95, which began development in the early 90s. However, shortly before it was set to enter service, McDonnell Douglas was acquired by Boeing. Many believed that Boeing would scrap the MD-95 project, but they didn’t and in the late 1990s announced the project would continue, with the plane being called the Boeing 717. The first planes were delivered to Florida based low-cost carrier AirTran in 1999.
TheHobartAviationFan 