Aviation Center Australia

Every now and then, Germanwings provides the fuselages of its airplanes to other companies to generate advertising revenue. Since April 2007, the Airbus A319 registered D-AKNF, has been promoting the hotel group Park-Inn-Hotels with a colorful mosaic design and the hotel’s motto “Sleep Well, Live Well”. The model will reflect the sophisticated livery authentically in the 1/500 scale.

The only in 1993 founded airline from the tiny emirate Katar is already today considered to be one of the world’s best airlines. No less than 18 Airbus A330-200s represent the smallest unit in the fleet. The A330-200 with the registration A7-ACA still carries the traditional livery and entered the fleet in May 2002 as the first of its type.

When in 2001 the Kazakh Aeroflot successor company Air Kazhakhstan declared bankruptcy, Air Astana went into operation with a modern fleet. The Kazakh state owns 51 percent, while the British BAE Systems has a 49 percent stake. Air Astana is one of the most renowned airlines of the former CIS states and one of the fastest growing airlines worldwide.

Through the merger with Indian Airlines, Air India is to become Asia’s biggest airline. Part of the ambitious plan is an extensive fleet renewal program in which the airline will receive on average two new Airbus or Boeing airplanes per month until 2011. The original of this model with the registration VT-ALA and the name “Andra Pradesh” was the first of the eight ordered Boeing 777-237LRs to be registered in July 2007.

The success story of the famous aerobatic team “Blue Angels” of the US Navy’s Marine Corps began in 1946 with impressive formation flights. With the group’s and fleet’s quickly rising popularity, a transportation airplane soon became necessary to bring the equipment as well as the crew itself to the air shows. In 1959, after initially operating a Douglas R4D-5 and a Curtiss Commando, the Blue Angels commissioned a Douglas R5D-3 – which was the US Navy’s name for the DC-4 – with the registration 50868. According to the fleet’s inventory, it received the plain name “8” and it was operated until March 1968.

American Airlines ordered 50 airplanes type DC-6 from the manufacturer McDonnell Douglas. The original of this limited model, N90744 “Flagship Roanoke”, was commissioned in November 1947. It remained in operation for American Airlines for more than 20 years before it was sold to Columbia.

The original of this mold novelty was registered for China Xinjiang Airlines (CXJ) as B-2018. The first plans for a Soviet pendant to the Boeing 747 were developed around 1968 and the result was a very crude airplane, which was performance-wise clearly inferior to the 747, and didn’t stand a chance, technically, against newly developed western jets like DC-10, L-1011 or Airbus A300. Even companies from the former Eastern Bloc like LOT, CSA or Interflug couldn’t do anything with it, so CXJ became one of the very few airlines to operate the IL-86 outside the former Soviet Union.

With the Soviet Union’s dissolution, even Aeroflot fell apart in 1992 and numerous successor companies were established in the newly re-independent republics. So in 1993, Armenian Airlines with headquarters in Yerevan was founded. It inherited all the airplanes of the former Aeroflot directorate, including two IL-86. Herpa now releases CCCP-86118, manufactured in 1991, in the 1/500 scale. Armenian Airlines operated it with the registration EK-86118 until its bankruptcy in 2003 – it is still in operation today at the successor company Armavia. The model’s landing gear features rubber tires.

What the Boeing C-17 is for the US president, for instance as a transporter for his heavy Lincoln state limousine – was in the 90s the AN-124 of the new Russia. The 4 x 230 kN rated D-185-turbofans give the cargo plane, also called “Ruslan” a payload of up to 124 tons. The original AN-124-100 received the registration RA-82072, but remained in the government fleet for only a short time because the operating costs for this giant could no longer be justified. Since 1999, it has been an asset of the semi-commercial Antonov Design Bureau again, from where it is brokered worldwide for the most demanding charter operations.

Scandinavia’s SAS was considerably involved in the founding of Thai International in 1959 and used the Thai airline as extended arm of their East Asian services. Just three years after the founding, Sud-Est Aviation SE-210 “Caravelle III” replaced the three DC-6Bs with which Thai had launched its commercial air services. The original of this model novelty limited to 2,000 examples, HS-TGH “Srisoonthon”, was the third airplane of the type to replace the fleet’s last DC-6B, upon which Thai was able to market itself as an “All Jet Airline”

The Belgian air force operates ten medium-to heavy transports type Lockheed C-130H „Hercules“. Within NATO operations, the original of this limited model novelty with the registration CH-05 was also operated in Afghanistan. For the squadron’s 20th anniversary in 1992, this machine received an impressive special Indian headdress livery, in which this limited edition model also comes.

Boeing’s long-haul interception radar-platform is based on the civilian Boeing 707-300C of 1961. This airplane, equipped with the latest electronics, was for the first time capable of completely monitoring a surveillance area with radar, finally preventing opposing forces being able to operate undetected at low level flights. The USAF operates 33 machines, among them the original of this model with the registration 71-1407 of the “552nd Air Control Wing” based at the Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma.