The Queen is Dead, Long Live the Queen!

This evening, a party to honour the new queen of the skies was held by some crazy aviation fanatics, who were on board the first flight or will be onboard the first flight tomorrow. So actually it should have been 100% of the people on the flight (I guess nobody ever onboard this flight is not crazy about planes and flying), but we were only a small group, as this was not an official Singapore Airlines event, but an event organized by some flyertalk members.

Under the patronage of Tim Spahr we gathered together at Zeta Bar at the Sydney Hilton, to praise the new Queen and behead the former Queen.

It just needed a few strokes with a hacksaw...

And off was the head. Poor 747, lost your nose.

Tim had also prepared some interesting videos on aviation history in general, a 747 "farewell" video and a short video on the all new Airbus A380.

It was a nice casual event with lots of interesting talks, and I am looking forward to tomorrow, to see at least some of those on tomorrow's flight.

Further commemorative info you may find at http://www.sq380.net/

No A380?

Ladies and Gentleman, the day has come when the A380 will take over air leadership from 37 year old Boeing 747 Series as the world's largest commercial airliner.

The first-firstflight from Singapore to Sydney departed on time, and a big ad campaign in Sydney advertised a low pass to come in the afternoon.

So i took the pilgrimage to the harbour, together with a huge load of other people, to expect the fly by at around 5.30pm.



But nothing happened. Some helicopters hovered around and disappeared. No Airbus A380 to see, no A380 to hear...

At 5.45pm one of the waiting spotters announced that he just got a call that Singapore Airlines Flight SQ380 has safely landed at Sydney Int'l Airport about 10 minutes ago. The disappointment among the crowd was huge, but it was to expect because of the bad weather.

So I wish I could present you some exciting pictures, but sadly, I was at the wrong place.

But I promise more pictures tomorrow, on MY first flight on this exciting new aircraft.

In preparation for the first takeoff

After some very hectic days (why do people ALWAYS need something immediatly when you are at 110% productivity already) with little to none sleep I'm finally filling up my suitcase. When i take a look at it it resembles more the sortiment of an electronic equipment salesman

Its an assortment of power cables, adapters, chargers, firewire and usb cables, batteries for one digiSLR, one compact digicam, and one DV-cam, tapes for the videocamera...

Electronic things make life complicated - but just because we allow them to do so.

Anyway, I got my first Singapore Airlines A380 Model! It was a present on Wednesday's press conference.

It's in 1:400 Scale and looks nice.... we'll see how well it translates into the real thing

So I'll continue to get my things together. At 07:50 AM my Lufthansa flight starts to Frankfurt, connecting to SQ25 to Singapore.

But I'm sure I'll blog before going on the long route.

Press Snipplets

Woohooo, I'm in the media!!
I feel a littlebit like a celebrity now :)

After two phone interviews with newspapers from Singapore, they actually printed stories about me. Sometimes it's good to be a cheapstake, at least some more people out there know that I exist now :))

But read for yourself:

http://a380.burdicek.com/straitstimes.pdf
http://a380.burdicek.com/thenewpaper.pdf

I especially like the 2nd article. Thanks Celine, really well done!

So, today is press conference day here in Vienna. Probably I also get some coverage here in Austria. I just love to be in the spotlight.

Delivered!

Finally, with 1 1/2 years of delay, the newest "Baby" of European's Airbus Industries has been delivered to its launching customer, Singapore Airlines.
But to speak of the A380 as a Baby is probably a bit underestemating, as it is currently world's largest airliner.
Is it beautiful? No. Is it elegant? No. But it's huge, and will probably mean a revolution to aviation industry, as it is the most enviromental friend, the most fuel-efficient aircraft with the least price per seatmile. It is probably not as a big revolution as the Boeing 747 was more than 30 years ago, and Boeing also claims that it's new Dreamliner, put into operation (probably?) next year to be even more -everything, but that yet has to come.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to my first flight on the A380. Wednesday I'll attend a respective press conference in Vienna, and on Saturday I allready start my journey to the east.