jrl767

as usual, WHBM has provided a veritable fountain of historically relevant information

AF indeed ran a Combi HKG-BOM (the OAG listing actually shows it as a joint operation with UTA), as well as both a Combi and a standard -200 CDG-REC-GIG, but the days of operation didn’t align for a continuous trip

the more important note in rebuttal is that one of WHBM’s historical bits is inaccurate

and herewith a hint: the stop on the second leg was in the home country of the airline of record

I knew in the back of my mind that Macao was a Portuguese colony, so the basic Story Premise of a Macao client of a firm based in Rio isn’t entirely far-fetched

jlemon

Back when I visited Macau (a.k.a. Macao) during the early 1990's, there was scheduled air service to the former Portuguese colony....but one did not arrive on a fixed wing aircraft. Instead, one arrived at the Macau Ferry Terminal from Hong Kong on board a twin engine Bell 222 helicopter operated by East Asia Airlines. I did not fly with them as it was my desire to travel on board a Boeing 929 hydrofoil from Hong Kong. And as we approached Macau, one could see the new airport project underway with land being reclaimed from the sea. I believe the Macau airport opened during the mid 1990's.

BTW, the successor of East Asia Airlines Ltd. (EAA) is still around. In the late 1990's, EAA partnered with another company to form Helicopters Hong Kong Ltd. ("HeliHK") and the Bell triple-deuces were replaced with Sikorsky S-76C+ rotorcraft. The current version of this scheduled helicopter airline service which traces its roots to EAA is Sky Shuttle Helicopters Ltd. which operates Leonardo (formerly Agusta Westland) AW 139 rotorcraft on its Hong Kong - Macau service.

WHBM

OK, different 747 variant again, different way again.

What about South African Airways on one of their 747SPs, Hong Kong-Mauritius-Jo'burg, followed by Jo'burg-Cape Town-Rio, the latter stopping off because Jo'burg's elevation prevented even a 747SP from getting to Rio nonstop.

jrl767

SA 74Ls over the HKG-MRU-JNB/JNB-CPT-GIG routing are CORRECT

there was also a second hint in my previous reply

WHBM

My own first trip there was just months after the new Hong Kong airport opened. The then single runway was blocked on our arrival, and we went into an extended hold over the sea which headed out right overhead the new Macao airport, which has been wholly reclaimed from the sea. Eventually after seemingly getting halfway to Manila we turned and came back the same way. I suspect the control towers of the two airports may be visible from one another, and a spectacular road bridge has now been built across the Pearl River estuary, connecting the two.

That will teach me to write eulogistic commentaries about the routing, which turn out to be wrong by a whole continent ... ​​​​​​​

WHBM

......

jlemon

There are reports floating around out there that following the opening of the new airport, TAP briefly served Macau and they did so due to the influence of the Portuguese government (which I think owned the airline at the time). One story is that TAP operated A340 flights in conjunction with Sabena with a stop being made in Brussels between Lisbon and Macau. It's also been reported that TAP subsequently operated the service with a stop in Bangkok. These Macau flights apparently did not last very long and were reportedly discontinued over objections made by the Portuguese government directed at TAP.

However, I'm not sure whether any of this is actually true as I've been unable to find any schedules to substantiate this Macau service.

It does appear that TAP Air Portugal operated at least one charter flight with an A340 into Macau....

https://www.airliners.net/photo/TAP-...0-312/365917/L

jrl767

given the routing hint, I was slightly surprised that no one guessed Alitalia, with the second flight being the 1x/week FCO-MXP-GIG Combi trip (however, the HKG-FCO service was via BKK and BOM, so wouldn’t have met the one-stop condition)

WHBM

When the new airport opened Air Macao started up, which has become a small player in the region. TAP Air Portugal was actually the key initial investor, and provided management and A320 technical support. Some of the A320s, which in the first years had Portuguese registrations, went back and forth between the two - one in Air Macao livery used to turn up regularly at London Heathrow. I never saw it close enough to see if it had TAP stickers as well.

In the UK, we inevitably tend to follow the Hong Kong tradition of spelling it Macao, whereas elsewhere has transliterated the Cantonese as Macau.

** To my surprise, there's a video on YouTube specifically on an Air Macau livery A320 arriving at London Heathrow in 1998, operating a TAP Air Portugal flight from Lisbon. Shot from the top of the old Terminal 2 car park, all now demolished, there are an interesting range of aircraft from 25 years ago in the background.

** ** Further edit - let's have a Bonus Question. What aircraft/carriers can you spot in the background ?

WHBM

OK, well I'll start things off, with a puzzle.

At 0:55 in the film there is, in the far background, what appears to be a British Airways A320 over by Terminal 4. Should be fine, BA had its 10 pioneer A320s then. But it looks in the "Chelsea Rose" World Tails livery, which BA were rolling out at the time. Now in all the listings of this novel colour scheme, none of the A320s had this. So what is it ? Different tail colour (but it certainly looks like Chelsea Rose) ? A 737-400, one of which had the scheme ? It doesn't seem to have the 737 tail. Is it a 767 - but looks too small.

jlemon

Well, I think I see a South African Airways Boeing 747-400 parked in front of the BA hangar.....

WHBM

Well here I am, sat out in the garden swing seat on a particularly pleasant cloudless summer evening, facing west to see everyone being sequenced up for the approach to Heathrow, who are on westerlies arriving over Central London, while underneath them London City traffic is coming in and out on easterlies. You don't very often get the two using opposite directions, only on almost still wind days like this evening. At mid-height multiple northbound Easyjets are climbing out of Gatwick, while contrailing up high are the evening departures from Europe, Amsterdam etc, down to Spain or even South America. An Azerbaijan Airlines 787 has just rolled over into Heathrow from Baku, which is doubtless an unusual sight in the USA.

Back to that 1998 Heathrow video, and the 747 climbing out in the distance at the start is, I think, a Malaysian Airlines 747-400, nonstop to Kuala Lumpur, judging by the snatches of livery you can see on it. Malaysian built up quite a business with one-stop connections to places like Hong Kong, Singapore, and particularly various Australian points, and liked to make out their service was up to Singapore Airlines standards, but at a cheaper fare. They didn't quite get there, but nevertheless were pretty good, especially with 35" legroom even in Y on the 747s. Unfortunately in more recent times they lost it all, on multiple fronts, and are now a pale shadow of the influence they once had.

SAA 747-400 ? Yes, they were a daily sight at Heathrow, arriving early morning, departing late evening, and sitting there all day. Commonly two and occasionally three (just the same as Malaysian) Nowadays gone completely, in fact the whole airline has. Surprisingly it's the Emirates/Etihad/Qatar/THY lot who have, once again, risen to take so much of the UK to South Africa traffic through their hubs.

jlemon

I'll try a few more here, both of which are fairly wild guesses...

It appears the front end of a Qantas Boeing 747-400 in a special livery is visible.

And as for the aircraft taxiing away from the camera, perhaps we are looking at back end of a United Boeing 767-300.

BTW, back in 1998 one could have also seen these aircraft at Heathrow, both of which were, of course, manufactured in the UK.....

https://www.airliners.net/photo/Brit...200A/1407019/L

https://www.airliners.net/photo/Jers...ven-/1187716/L

Meantime, a refreshing tropical thundershower here this afternoon has now given way to brilliant sunshine. And we can definitely use the precipitation as a good portion of southern Louisiana including the Lafayette area has been experiencing moderate to severe drought conditions for the past few months.

WHBM

This was one of a couple of Qantas 747-400s done in an overall Australian Aboriginal art scheme. "Wunala Dreaming" (this one) had a red base, and "Nalanji Dreaming" had a pale blue base. They lasted for years, at a time when I was making several trips to Australia, though I never flew on them. It was apparent from all the comments in airport lounges when one or the other was visible that they were pretty universally known and admired by the general public there. There were tee-shirts etc in tourist shops with the designs.

British Airways also had two World Tails schemes, as mentioned above, done with the same artwork as the two Qantas aircraft.

WHBM

Just to comment on these, that BAe146 of BA G-GNTZ, with yet another World Tail scheme, was a longstanding regular on London to Isle of Man, overnighting at the latter, and came through Heathrow 3 times a day. That service is currently rather degraded, it's moved to London City now and is a Loganair ATR-42, just once or twice a day.

The Jersey European One-Eleven, nearly 30 years old, is actually in its last weeks' of commercial operation, it was retired before the end of the year and broken up a while later. One of the original BEA Manchester/Berlin fleet, later on the Shuttle backups (when I quite possibly flew on it), it then went through a few operators in its last years. Despite the livery it's actually an Air France flight, from Lyon to London, which ALSO kept it busy three times a day for some months, and a couple of years earlier it had been doing the same thing for Sabena, only then fully painted in their livery. Jersey European did quite a lot of this sort of subcharter work, they then changed their name to British European, and then again to FlyBe (hence the BE at the end). Having got quite substantial, they went under a couple of years ago, but in recent months have actually restarted, same planes, same purple livery, and one of their Dash-8s actually passed low overhead us just an hour ago headed for Heathrow. Because (by an extremely tortuous circular link) we are sat out in that garden swing seat again