Air New Zealand 787-9 to Perth, second -9 takes flight

• • Aircraft, AirNZ
AirNZ-B789

As reported over on the Australian Aviation website this week the second of Air New Zealand’s 787-900s is preparing for its delivery flight, and the current in service model has expanded trans-tasman services to Perth now…

Air New Zealand’s debut of Boeing 787-9 services to Perth comes as the airline’s second 787-9 is prepared for delivery after completing its first flight over Washington State. ZK-NZF took off from Everett field on Sunday, September 14 local time and was in the air for one hour and 49 minutes before landing at Moses Lake, according to flight tracking website flightaware.com.

Project Airbus A32X sharklet preview

• • Aircraft, Freeware
PHLshark

Stian from the Project Airbus team has posted an update and some pics of the new sharklet fitted models from them for the entire range of narrow body Airbus. No doubt any Pacific repaints will be adaptable with a tweak for the winglets themselves. Be interesting to see. More info and pics in the form post here…

Here is a sneakpeak of an update for the A32X series.. And yes.. The whole series will have sharklets. From A318 to A321. More previews will come in this topic! First out is two A321’s.. Still WIP. Dont ask for release date!

PMDG 777 review and interview with Rob Randazzo

• • Aircraft, Interviews, Payware, Reviews
pmdg_773er_exterior

I know I know, it’s not like we’ve had a shortage of reviews and accolades for the PMDG 777, but this review has a twist in that it wraps up with a brief interview with Rob Randazzo..

Waiting for Service Pack 1 for the PMDG 777-200LR/F took longer than anyone, including PMDG themselves, expected. But now that it’s finally there, and I’ve had a chance to test it, let’s take a new look at the product in question… When you finish the review itself, keep on reading! Robert S. Randazzo, the CEO of PMDG, has taken some time out of his schedule to answer some questions. The answers he provided are very interesting, and are added to the bottom of this review in the form of a short interview for the readers enjoyment.

Wilco Tecnam P2006T released

• • Addons, Aircraft, FSX, P3D, Payware
tecnam_3d

Wilco have just published a decent looking rendition of the Tecnam P2006T light twin. With a few of these about in the Pacific, and likely to appear in Aero Club and training companies in the region over time, this would be a nice machine to pickup for local simmers…

Wilco Publishing announce a new title in the HiFi Simulations series : the P2006T by Tecnam. The P2006T is a modern 4-seats light twin-engine aircraft.  It is an excellent trainer for twin engined aircraft as used by real life aircraft training companies.  It is stable and provides superb all-round vision with the wing-high configuration.The P2006T features STOL and rough runway operation capabilities.

see the Product Page

New pics of FlightBeam KSFO HD

• • Addons, Airports, FSX
Flightbeam-KSFO-HD

As posted on SimFlight this week there’s a very tasty looking HD rework of FlightBeams already excellent KSFO (San Francisco) in the pipeline. Pics look excellent, and makes for a great long-haul destination for Pacific simmers, and a wicked gateway airport to other domestic USA locations…

Many simmers who own the current version 2 of KSFO San Francisco by FlightBeam Studios are dreaming of the same design quality in their Californian airport like the last products they released. The upcoming KSFO HD will be go even beyond. The designers will introduce “crowd-source”, a new optional feature that bring 3D passengers with very little performance impact.

Google’s Project Wing

• • Aviation News
Google-Project-Wing

Although I don’t really see the attraction of flying a drone model in the sim (despite the obvious irony that we are effectively remote flying in the Sim anyway) there’s been a pretty interesting reveal from Google this week that they have an Amazon like delivery drone program already underway, in fact it’s been in action for two years in Australia. Wonder if this will appear in the virtual aircraft hangars any time soon?

For two years, Google has quietly been developing autonomous flying vehicles that can be used to deliver packages for disaster relief or for commerce purposes, the company revealed Thursday… Prototypes have already been built and tested delivering packages to remote farms in Queensland, Australia. The country was chosen because of its more open rules about drone use, the BBC said. Farmers there received candy bars, dog treats, cattle vaccines, water, and radios.

Second AirNZ B789 pics emerge

• • Aircraft, AirNZ, Real World
AirNZ-B789

Another piece of news from the MRC blog last week, pics are emerging (photo on this post by Royal S King) of the second AirNZ B789 in the new white and black livery making its first public appearance at Paine Field before delivery..

Air New Zealand’s Boeing 787-9 ZK-NZF MSN 34335 has broken cover at Paine Field these last couple of days as it prepares to make its first flight and be delivered to Auckland during the third week of September.

Airwork Boeing 737-400 freight conversion

• • Aircraft, Aviation News, Real World
Toll-737

As reported on Mike Condon’s blog last week, Airwork have just finished converting one of their 737s from PAX to Freighter config, a couple of nice pics and some background on the blog post. All we need now is for the QWings team to get around to releasing that 737 Class model they’ve been working on…

Following the landing accident of Airwork/Toll Boeing 737-300 freighter ZK-TLC at Honiara on 26 January 2014 and its subsequent scraping the operator delivered ZK-JTQ to Florida for reconfiguration to a freighter and it departed Brisbane for Apia and Kona on 23 March.  It was noted again 17 August (NZ time) in transit at Long Beach, no doubt having arrived from Florida, and continued onto Kona.