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First mobile donut/chowder wagon pulls into Boston
By adamg on Mon, 04/23/2012 - 1:09pm
Redsox223 watched as the first non-stop JAL flight from Tokyo landed at Logan yesterday, after passengers were feted with Boston-inspired donuts and clam chowder.
Copyright Redsox223. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.
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Comments
Today's shameless effort to stir commentary:
A disappointingly bland livery from JAL, but a beautiful aircraft all the same and a revolution in air travel to and from KBOS.
Three cheers for another direct international flight and better connectivity with markedly better connections to Asia (and to the team at Massport who have been unrelenting in their pursuit of this and other direct international flights for years)! Now let's get those flights to Tel Aviv and Moscow/St. Petersburg!
(Now the shamelessly transparent effort to get some commentary going:
Does this take us some small step closer to being a World-class city?)
It's pretty nuts
The brand new planes they're using can circle the circumference of the globe only to stop to refuel twice.
Question, anyone know if they're going up over Canada, Alaska and down the Asian continent, or do they flight over the states and Pacific ocean?
Tried to find the route but only got the generic marketing stuff.
Over Canada/Alaska most likely
The Great Circle is to the North from here. It would cost more time and fuel to go over the Pacific.
Here's the shortest line so you get a feel for it: http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=NRT-bos&MS=wls&DU=mi
They probably fly a little off of that line just to avoid going nearly straight over the top.
Great Circle as a Kid's Activity
When my guys were in elementary school, I had a meeting in SanFrancisco that would normally have been in Boston. So I asked them how much more time they thought it would take for the people coming from London to get to San Francisco instead of Boston, and handed them a globe.
Of course, they guessed (wrongly) that the travellers would cross North America ... and they guessed the trip time from Boston to the West Coast as the additional travel time.
Then I handed them a piece of string, asked them the question again, and left them to their explorations. Kept them busy for a while.
That's close
Per Flight Aware's tracking of yesterday's JAL7, it went just south of that line. I saw it take off from Logan yesterday when I was at the end of Long Wharf during lunch. It was still in the air, and still would be for a few more hours, when I went to bed last night.
When it landed ...
It was close to the same time, one day later. (Tokyo is 13 hours ahead of us, 12 hour flight ...)
going straignht up over
going straignht up over Nunavut is the default route on the JFK to Hong Kong route I've flown a handful of times on Cathay.... but one time the return flight did leave Hong Kong due east, out over Taiwan and never looked back-- I kept waiting for a big left that never came, and we came in over San Francisco and just kept on trucking to the east coast. The weirdest thing was it didn't seem to take any longer than the normal 15 or 16 hours. I'm guessing there was just a wicked jet stream that they picked up on by going that way.
Yep
East to west usually uses a polar route to avoid the easterly jet stream over the Pacific. Depending on the direction of the jet stream at the time, the west to east HKG-JFK routes may go up directly over the pole, along the Alaskan coastline similar to Tokyo routes, or directly over the Pacific.
nope
I was on the flight and saw neither doughnuts nor chowder (on the flight or at the shindig beforehand). Even without, it was a bazillion times better than having to fly through Newark.
The 787's a nice plane. It's quieter than I was expecting and the adjustable tint windows are pretty slick.
Way better than flying through San Francisco
Flying cattle class from Boston to Asia via the usual hubs -- San Francisco, Chicago, or NYC -- is an unpleasant, draining experience. Many flights to China/Taiwan/HK are routed through Narita, and the typical time spent in airports and on planes can be 24 hours or even more if you're going to Southeast Asia.
If JAA is claiming 12.5 hours in the air (that's what the TV news reported yesterday) that makes a huge difference. It's not fun, but it makes life a lot more bearable.
My main concern with the new route is price -- I was told by a Chinatown travel agent that not enough tickets are being released, which keeps prices a lot higher than taking longer routes through other U.S. cities.
what a fucking beautiful
what a fucking beautiful airplane