Birthday Milestone For An Aircraft

[Aharon]

Shalom and greetings all my pals,

Today is MD-11's thirty-six year birthday after its debut on 10 January 1990. My native country's EL AL had 2 MD-11ERs in service for about 2 years. I am presenting you recreation of real life EL AL MD-11ER flight as seen below

Presenting a nice charter flight from EPKK Krakow John Paul II International Airport located 7 miles west of the city centre of Krakow in southern Poland to EHAM Amsterdam Airport Schiphol located 5 nautical miles southwest of Amsterdam, Holland.

Airborne on climb to FL360 after take off



Nice engine view and cool Polish landscape!!





Still climbing to FL360



Passing city of Katowice in Poland



Now cruising at FL360 in era 1998 Kodak photograph style





Descending from FL360 to 10,000 ft



Descending through clouds





On final approach to runway 36R with background view of waters of Westeinderplassen





Seconds before touchdown



TOUCHDOWN



Front landing gear gliding down in smoothly graceful manner while still producing cool tire smokes





More tire smokes



Exiting from runway into taxiway for long taxi to gate







Arriving at gate



Thank you for viewing!! Stay tuned for next exciting flight

Regards,

Aharon

[Airspeed]

Another well documented, educational flight, Aharon. Thanks

[Gupyzer0]

Didn't knew El Al used MD-11s until now.

[Aharon]

Didn't knew El Al used MD-11s until now.

Yep it was last minute emergency addition. El Al made big mistake overbooking passengers meaning there were 2 times more passengers than the planes or flights could carry hence El Al instead of losing potential earnings and profits from massive bookings decided to scramble to find two extra planes at last minute notice for 1 year lease (El Al wound up leasing them for 2 years) to correct the overbooking mistakes and since the usual planes such as 747s were not available for immediate lease at last minute notice, El Al had no choice but wounding up with two MD-11ERs which were the only option available over lack of availability of much preferred and first choice 747s. That caused political storm and anger in the national government of Israel because Israel did not like to see El Al getting any airline plane WITHOUT heavy modifications for security purposes (El Al 747s were nicknamed kosher version of Flying Fortresses because they had extremely heavy security modifications making the El Al 747s heaviest of all 747s around the world.) El Al offered compromise by making sure that MD-11ERs would fly only to very safe airports such as KLAX, Zurich, and so on while not using them for African or Indian or Asian routes or any airport of questionable safety.

One MD-11ER was extensively used for LLBG to KLAX routes due to MD-11's extra long range and the other MD-11ER was used for regular Western European routes as well as charter services.

Nice to meet you on the CBFSIM forums.

Regards,

Aharon