Heir to the Queen

Sometime ago, Delta announced that it would be retiring the 747.  I was kind of saddened to hear that decision as the 747 is a pretty cool aircraft but I realize that it is getting a little long in the tooth.  My mom found some old pictures of me from when my dad was stationed on Guam and there was one of a three year old version of me looking at a 747.  I'm assuming that particular 747 was retired long ago.
A couple of weeks ago, United had the last flight of its 747 which makes Delta the last US carrier to use them.  Supposedly, the last Delta 747 will be retired in December.  Of course, there are international carriers that use them which means that I'll probably still see them.  Still, it's kind of nice to be able to catch them daily (if possible).

 I'm not sure when, but Delta announced that the routes between Detroit and Asian destinations would be replaced with the Airbus A350.  I was kind of disappointed by that because I was hoping that I would be able to see more 787's.  Something tells me they got a better deal on the Airbus.  Having not seen any pictures of the A350, I had no idea what to expect.

 N501DN is the first Delta A350 and it was delivered from the Airbus factory in Toulose, France on August 5th.  The flight was to Atlanta as that is Delta's headquarters.  On Saturday, I saw a post that they flew her to Detroit.  I'm assuming to familiarize the pilots with the aircraft.  In the process it did a few touch and goes at the airport in Covington, KY.  I was unable to catch it on Saturday.

 Yesterday, they did the same flight but I had other things I needed to do and I barely missed it.  I saw that it was making the same run again today and I thought that I was going to miss it again but I made it in time.

 I will have to say that it is a beautiful aircraft.  Not quite on the 757 scale but still not bad.  It doesn't quite look like the other Airbuses.  I'm glad that I managed to catch it.  It is going to have some big shoes to fill though.

 The A350 came out of a need by Airbus to counter the threat that the 787 was starting to provide.  After Boeing worked out the kinks of that design, it was starting to sell fairly well.  Airbus was content to keep produced the A330.  Airbus proposed a derivative of the A330 with similar aerodynamics and characteristics to the 787.

 That design didn't go over too well and Airbus redesigned it in 2006 leading to the current design.   The first flight of this design was June 14, 2013 and the first aircraft was delivered to Qatar Airlines on January 15, 2015.  The current primary users are Qatar Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines and Finnair.

 As I said, this was Delta's first A350.  I'm not sure how many more test runs they are going to do before putting it into service but I'll have to say it was pretty cool to catch an almost brand new aircraft.

 I kind of like the wing tips.

And for comparison's sake, Spirit Airlines followed with an A319.

While it will be sad to see the 747 go into airplane heaven, it is nice to see she has a worthy successor.