First ‘OFFICIAL’ Images Of Lufthansa’s New Livery On Their First 747-8i

First ‘OFFICIAL’ Images Of Lufthansa’s New Livery On Their First 747-8i

In Frankfurt today, Lufthansa pulled out all the stops and threw a proper party to officially unveil their new logo when D-ABYA was put on display in Hangar 7.

Though the livery has been ‘public’ for several days, today was the first time that a significant amount of people had a chance to finally see her in person, officially carrying the new look of Lufthansa.

Earlier in the day, I attended a press briefing hosted by Lufthansa’s CEO, Carsten Spohr that discussed some of the logic and rationale behind the decision to update the look.    Some of his comments were expected, yet some raised an eyebrow.    I’ll go into greater detail about his comments in another post.  I’ll also talk about what passengers can expect once they get aboard a Lufthansa aircraft starting this Spring.   All I can say at this point is that I came away impressed with what is planned and look forward to seeing the rollout.

For now, because I’m working on no sleep over the last 48 hours, I’ll leave you with these images from tonight’s party to whet your appetite.   I’ll have a lot more from today’s events  to talk about.  Tomorrow I’ll have exclusive shots of ‘YA’ on the ramp at Frankfurt as she prepares for her Tour Of Germany.   If I’m lucky, I might get to feel her jet blast as she scoots past me.   Fingers crossed!

a large building with lights and a plane

Special light effects danced all over the fuselage…..

a large airplane in a hangar with bright lights

Lookin’ Good!

a blue and white airplane with white logo

a large airplane in a hangar

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LUFTHANSA’s 747-8i ‘YA’ had a tough week……

LUFTHANSA’s 747-8i ‘YA’ had a tough week……

In case you missed it, last week was a week to forget for Lufthansa’s D-ABYA, their first 747-8i that entered service back on June 1, 2012.

On 2 separate occasions, ‘Brandi’ had to make unscheduled landings due to smoke/fire alarms in the nose gear bay being triggered.    When fire alarms go off, the plane has to land ASAP.  No questions, no debate and if not possible, no fuel dump.

The first incident took place only a few minutes into her flight on Tuesday August 4 from Frankfurt to Rio de Janeiro.   She returned safely shortly after take off and passengers were booked on later flights to Rio.

Then on August 7, while enroute from Frankfurt to New York (JFK), she was forced to land in Manchester, England for the same reason.   ‘YA’ spent the night in MAN and flew back with her passengers to FRA the next day.   Passengers were accommodated at local hotels in MAN and then rebooked on flights to get them to NYC after returning to FRA.

Thanks to a few well placed sources (FlyerTalk’s Oliver2002 for example), the reason behind these false alarms has been discovered.   Apparently Frankfurt’s ground crews had jammed a tow bar in the nose gear of D-ABYA and in the process of freeing it damaged the smoke and fire sensors.

The problem has been identified and resolved.   Fortunately it had nothing to do with the aircraft itself or its reliability but rather with a ground handler that should have paid better attention to what they were doing around a 350 million dollar aircraft!

a close-up of a plane