Yesterday, EL AL operated its final Boeing 747-400 flight. The sendoff included a “special” routing enroute from Tel Aviv to Rome.
Via Flightradar 24, take a look at the flight path of LY1747. The 747 “drew” a 747 over the Mediterranean Sea just west of Cyprus:
Hard to imagine how that must have felt onboard…the drawing added about an hour to the flight.
A proper sendoff to be sure, but retirement could not come soon enough for these particular 747s. EL AL has beautiful new Boeing 787 Dreamliners with a spacious and modern business class product. Its 747s, however, have a premium product so old that the first class seats are inferior to the 787 business class seats. The business class seats are more akin to a generous premium economy product.
CONCLUSION
Wasteful? I guess…especially in the world of flight shaming. But we won’t see the iconic 747 transporting passengers for much longer and each unique sendoff is a fitting tribute to the Queen of the Skies. Although I never flew the 747 on EL AL, I love that so many airlines have retired her in a unique way. I look forward to reviewing EL AL in 2020, though it won’t be on a 747-400.
A wasteful or fitting final tribute? Did you have a chance to fly on an EL-AL 747?
(H/T: One Mile at a Time)
I’m surprised they did this, what with the cost of fuel these days. A maneuver like this is very expensive.
The flight in itself was marketed as a last hurrah. Business class seats were available for 747 points, incredible value for a 3-4 hour flight. Economy seats went for 400 points.
A fully loaded 747 consumes somewhere in the range of 10,000 liters an hour, costing the maneuver less than 20,000$. Add in the fact that they were flying at well below cruising speed, meaning it was even less than that number.
Does this not seem like a massive waste of fuel? There’s a global warming crisis and planes are a part of that. Instead of these stupid stints, why don’t we think about how to save our planet… or, at least, not harm it even more than we already do!
Why don’t you tell that to the Chinese who still burn coal, dump waste, and do very little compared to other countries who try their best to be green, but still are getting slammed for doing nothing
Or to the Americans: withdrawing from Paris, encouraging fossil fuels, still cranking out gas-guzzling cars, pathetically poor public transport, a govt full of loony climate change deniers. etc, etc
China/USA: 2 peas in a pod.
Add in Australia for the trifecta.
Aviation contributes 2% towards the con that is called global warming. In the grand scheme of things, this was bugger all.
Maybe, as suggested above, go after the real instigators of ‘global warming’, namely the USA and China.
Review El al with transit in tlv. This is rare. There is a transit area in Ben Gurion Airport. Not too used
I tried to use it and was told it was only for Israeli citizens. What have you heard?