I have written about airline call signs before … but not in almost three years … so this reader mail caught my attention. Alberto Lopez, from Barcelona, Spain, writes “I was recently listening to air traffic control while waiting for a flight home from Chicago and noted many airlines do not use their name…
Sometimes an inside joke isn’t exactly an inside joke … but in the case of Otto it is an inside joke that started on movie screens around the world. Today’s Reader Mail comes from Rhonda Wilson, in Texas. Rhonda writes: I have been reading your Tweets for close to a year now and have…
A few weeks ago a new batch of 500 Flying With Fish Euro stickers arrived on my doorstep. I expected this box to last at least six months, if not a little longer, but instead they’re nearly all gone after a few weeks.  As of this mooring only 103 stickers remain … … and…
Since the official announcement that United Airlines and Continental Airlines would be merging one question seemed to rise to the top consistently amongst aviation geeks … I mean aviation enthusiasts … would United Airlines retain Channel 9 within its in-flight entertainment , integrating it into the Continental Airlines fleet. For those of you unfamiliar…
It has been a while since I’ve dug into reader mail, and tonight I was reminded of this while checking out the airplane photography of Leighton Matthews … so let’s dig in … today’s reader mail comes from H.M. Kumar who asks “With all the fanciful  airplane designs airlines are using for promotions and branding,…
Yesterday at 7:08am PST, a Boeing a 747-8KZF/SCD (RC523), flying as Flight BOE 523, lifted off from Runway 16R/34L at Paine Field, in Everett, Washington, for a 17-hour function and reliability test flight. After flying 8,119 miles over the continental United States, Flight BOE523 touched back down at Paine Field at 12:08am PST having made…
I’m not much on publicly using Flying With Fish to wish people Happy Birthday, with the exception of my Father who shares his birthday (date, year and city) with the first every airline lounge, which I couldn’t resist wishing a collective 70th birthday. … but today I’m going to wish fellow BoardingArea blogger Dan…
The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is an amazing aircraft, having remained in production for 57 years and in military service for 54 years, it seems there is no challenge the Hercules can’t handle. In fact, as the only military aircraft to ever remain in continuous production for more than 50 years, the sheer number of variants…
Sometimes questions come up time and time again because even among the biggest airplane geeks, and experienced aviation journalists, not everyone knows all the variants of all the aircraft flying around in the skies above our heads. As an airplane geek myself, it is widely known that I have a penchant for ‘three-holers,’ ie: planes…
There are all sorts of impressive statistics for commercial airliners, cost per available seat mile, cost per block hour, how many hours of flight per incident, how many operators fly a specific aircraft, types of variants of aircraft … but sometimes its difficult to put all these numbers into perspective. First the basics, the Boeing…
