registration #s on WOW Air planes

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Nice!

My wife and I flew WOW Air a couple of years ago. It's definitely a budget airline, but the newness of the planes was nice and their service was on par with what we've experienced from the big American carriers.
 
Virgin Atlantic has "vanity" registrations on their aircraft too. Each of their aircraft has a name, and the registrations on most of them tie in to the aircraft's name.
 
It still surprises me that people enter the airline game. (and it's good that they do)

To be a low cost carrier AND to have new planes? In an extremely competitive industry? How do they do it?

According to those Wendover Productions videos on YouTube, the average US carrier only makes a few thousand per FULL transcon flight.
 
Most airlines have their own distinct registration series.
Deltas N numbers usually end in DL, for example.
You could spot the ex-Northwest DC-9s that had originally belonged to Republic because their regs ended in NC, or North Central. Northwest had DC-9s that came from a number of different carriers' fleets.
The 717s have regs ending in AT, the first operator of these aircraft, as do the 737s from that carrier that Southwest kept.
United aircraft have regs usually ending in UA.
With any airline, it's usually easy to spot the prior operator of an aircraft that saw service before joining its current fleet by the alpha numeric reg series.
This is nothing exclusive to WOW but is rather something spotters have been hip to for many years.
 
Who else checks the Airworthiness Certificate just inside the door on their commercial flights??? I'm most interested in the date of issuance...

 
So a -222 was an aircraft originally delivered to United?
Is this one still active, maybe in the far north? With the little low bypass Pratts, a 737-200 can be equipped to operate legally from gravel strips as I'm sure you already knew.
I should have thought of the airworthiness cert as a reference. It would not be at all unusual for a civil transport to have a max takeoff weight in excess of its max landing weight. Does this always require an exemption?
I always look at the build plate located in the frame of the L1 door.
Interesting how old some of the MD80s still in service with a certain airline are, but I guess that's what you can get when an airline has extensive MRO operations and even an engine shop.
These aircraft look good in an out and are carrying passenger numbers undreamed of when they were new, often on pretty quick turns.
Nice that aircraft built when I was still in my twenties are still earning a living and aren't parked up in the desert awaiting scrapping.
 
Originally Posted By: fdcg27
So a -222 was an aircraft originally delivered to United?


Yes. Boeing had/has specific 2 number/letter codes for the delivery customer.

So an American 727-200 series would be coded as a 727-223. A Southwest 737-300 series was coded as a 737-3H4. Etc. Etc.
You can trace Boeings all the way back to the launch customer just by the type designator. Don't know about Airbus.

06 KLM
09 China Airlines
22 United
23 American Airlines
24 Continental Airlines
28 Air France
30 Lufthansa and Condor
31 Trans World Airlines
32 Delta Airlines
33 Air Canada
36 British Airways
38 Qantas
46 Japan Air Lines
47 Western Airlines
51 Northwest
52 Aeromexico
56 Iberia
57 Swiss Air
58 ElAl
59 Avianca
60 Ethiopian Airlines
67 Cathay Pacific
68 Saudia
69 Kuwait Airways
81 All Nippon Airways
82 TAP
83 SAS
90 Alaska Air
91 Frontier
1B China Southern
1H Emirates
1R Virgin Atlantic
2A Hawaiian Airlines
2W TAM /LATAM
3V EasyJet
4A United Parcel Service (UPS)
8E Asiana Airlines
9L Air China
AS Ryan Air
B5 Korean Air
B7 US Airways
BT Lufthansa Cargo
DZ Qatar Airways
F6 Philippine Airlines
FX Ethiad Airways
GP Lion
H4 Southwest
H6 Malaysia Airlines
J6 Air China
S2 FedEx
 
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