First flight on a Dreamliner

I had my first flight on a Dreamliner yesterday. It was only a very short flight - Sydney to Melbourne, which is about an hour. But I'm a plane geek, and I chose this flight because it was a Dreamliner. The flight was with Jetstar, which is a budget airline, so the service was as you'd expect.

But the plane was astonishing. I loved the windows. I always like to get a window seat when I'm flying, but it is always a little bit uninspiring to squint through the tiny windows. From what I've read, the Dreamliner windows are only about 30% bigger than those on other widebody planes, but they feel way bigger. You can even look comfortably out of the windows on the other side of the plane.

And it was so quiet! Until now, the quietest flights I've had have been upstairs on A380s, but this was even better. I could hear the baby behind me crying with perfect clarity. I reckon I could have listened to my mp3 player at normal volume.

I knew that the cabin could be kept at a higher pressure than in normal planes, and I definitely noticed that: my ears didn't pop going up or down. But I didn't realise how much higher the 787 flew than other planes: even on that short hop, I noticed on the screen that we were at 43,000ft. I'm sure that makes a massive difference for fuel economy.

I have to go to Britain later this year. All other things being equal (decent stopover locations and convenient flight times, basically), I'd choose an airline that's flying Dreamliners on the route over one that isn't.

And I say all this as someone whose Dad worked for British Aerospace, and who therefore has close links to, and a general preference for, Airbus. I hope the new A350 is good.

 

Why not? Do you never fly down to the other US states?

 

Ah. Yes, you used to get loads of big planes going through Anchorage, but all those long-range planes like the A340-600 and the 777ER mean that all those Asia-to-Eastern-US flights don't need to stop there any more.

 

Wow. The new quote thing is confusing.

 

Ahha! Yes, it was! Here's a picture.



But this was nothing so glamorous. It was one of these:

Jetstar isn't terrible. But its rival, Tigerair, is so awful that being sucked out of the window part-way through the flight would actually be an improvement on normal service.

And yes, it's a brilliant film. I love Bond films. Even OHMSS.

 

This flight was actually Sydney-Melbourne-Bangkok, but I just took the domestic leg. The Sydney-Melbourne route on its own is covered mainly by A319s/A320s (Jetstar and Tiger), 737s (Qantas and Vitgin) and 767s (Qantas). Routes from Sydney to smaller cities are either 737s (Qantas) or those little Embraers (Virgin).

But Virgin, Jetstar and Qantas all use widebodies - mainly A330s - on the Sydney-Perth and Melbourne-Perth routes. Mind you, that is almost the same sort of distance as a transatlantic flight.

Yes, I'd probably have avoided the 787 last year.

Are you thinking of this 747 one?

United Airlines Flight 811 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Or the DC-10 ones in the 70s (American Airlines and Turkish Airlines)?

 

My Dad, who at one point had to go to Munich every Tuesday, and who at another point was going to Riyadh once every two weeks, developed a terrible fear of commercial planes too. It was a huge problem - he had to see a shrink about it. It wasn't a fear of flying: it was more like claustrophobia.

My last ride on a DC-10 must have been 15 years ago, on an Eva Air flight from Taipei to Hong Kong. I always thought they were lovely-looking planes. Noisy at the back, though. I still see the occasional Fed-Ex one coming in to land at Sydney: they particularly suit that paint job.

And as for frightening events, the only really dodgy one I've ever had was as a kid, in one of the first Boeing 757s (which goes to what Troy said about not flying in brand-new planes before they've ironed out the glitches), an Air Europe one flying out of Manchester. The cooling system had failed, and air was coming in from the compressors at several hundred degrees F. There wasn't time to fly out to sea to dump fuel: the pilot just did a handbrake turn (technical term there), and flew straight back in, with full fuel tanks. A whole fleet of fire engines chased us down the runway, and a lot of passengers were unconscious by the time we hit the runway and they opened the doors. Several tyres burst when we hit the ground. It didn't give me a fear of flying, though.

 

It was. But I think the winner of this year's Eurovision should do the next one. This was the most Bond-theme song ever to have not been a Bond theme.

 

The biggest employer (apart from "being retired") in the town I grew up in manufactured fighter planes.

Before I was born they made the Lightning: Mach II and 70,000ft in 1959.
English Electric Lightning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



As I was growing up, it was the Tornado: we'd see them testing above the beach outside my school.

Panavia Tornado - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



And these days, it's the Eurofighter Typhoon.

Eurofighter Typhoon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Even now, 20 years and 10,000 miles from where I grew up, the one thing that reminds me of home more than anything else - more than the smell of chips and gravy, or the sound of a Lancashire accent, or the feel of drizzle driven by strong wind - is the sound of a fighter jet.

 

Well, we do have much better testing these days.