Earlier this month, as a result of personal circumstances and bad timing, I ended up needing to fly in five different aircraft over the course of a few days, trying to get from Buenos Aires to Tallinn to El Paso (not to mention three buses, two trains and a taxi). “It’s a good thing you like planes,” said a friend after hearing about my schedule. I do like planes. I like looking at planes. I like reading about planes. I like flying planes. I’m not sure I like being in planes, sitting in the cabin.

At each airport, I took photographs of the next aircraft waiting for me to board and then amused myself by looking up each registration and finding out the aircraft’s history. I hope you will enjoy what I found.

Boeing 747-830

Registration D-ABYO Saarland

My journey started on the 2nd of December with a 13-hour flight from Buenos Aires to Frankfurt in a Boeing 747-8. D-ABYO is one of Lufthansa’s nineteen Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental aircraft, making Lufthansa the largest operator of the passenger variant worldwide. There’s a great article and video on Flightradar24 documenting Lufthansa’s nineteen Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental aircraft. The 747-8 represents the final evolution of Boeing’s “Queen of the Skies”. Lufthansa took possession of D-ABYO on the 30th of April 2014 and named it after the German federal state of Saarland. Its five minutes of fame took place during the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, when Lufthansa created the “Fanhansa” special livery, sporting a logo of a football/soccer ball and the German flag. Lufthansa applied the livery on D-ABYO and sister aircraft D-ABYI Potsdam. This was the first time in Lufthansa’s 60-year history that the airline altered its name on aircraft fuselages for a promotional campaign.

The ten-year-old Boeing experienced its only notable safety event on the 22nd of February 2018. According to AeroInside, flight LH-401 from New York JFK to Frankfurt “departed JFK’s runway 31L but had to return after the crew reported an engine problem about 20 minutes into the flight at FL200.” The report notes that “passengers reported hearing a loud bang and observing flames from the left outboard engine” and that the Boeing 747-8 “landed safely back on JFK’s runway 04L about 40 minutes after departure” with “127 passengers on board.” No injuries occurred.

Airbus A321-131

Registration D-AIRL Kulmbach

My next flight was a Lufthansa A321 for the hop from Frankfurt to Tallinn. This aircraft was quite a bit smaller and quite a bit older. Lufthansa was the launch customer for the A321 in 1994 and D-AIRL was the tenth A321 delivery, in September 1994. Less than ninety A321-100s were ever built and most airlines have since retired them. At just over 30 years old, D-AIRL is one of the six oldest aircraft in Lufthansa’s entire fleet. German news outlet Wiesentbote explains that the city of Kulmbach has maintained an “aircraft sponsorship” (Flugzeug-Patenschaft) with Lufthansa since 1990, with D-AIRL being “christened” for the city. The same article reports D-AIRL specifically has visited completed nearly 50,000 flights to 135 different destinations, carrying approximately 5.2 million passengers as of this year. I like to think that I was passenger number 5.2 million and one.

AVSpotters says that D-AIRL was originally configured with 190 economy seats but in 2011 it was reconfigured to 205 economy seats, which explains why we were all squished in like sardines.

Following this flight, I spent eleven hours at home, most of which were spent sleeping.

ATR 72-500 (ATR 72-212A)

Registration OH-ATP

On the 4th of December I got up at an ungodly hour to catch the early morning flight from Tallinn to Helsinki in what was unquestionably the cutest of the five aircraft. Finnair say that they like the ATR 72 because it has a reverse gear and own stairs, meaning that it doesn’t need any equipment from the airport, and that it is amazingly fuel-efficient for these short hops, consuming less fuel per hundred passenger kilometers than most cars.

This ATR 72-500 seems to have gone through some interesting times before settling down with Finnair. OH-ATP was originally delivered to Flybe Nordic in 2012, a joint venture between Flybe and Finnair. Three years later, Flybe sold its 60% stake to Finnair for one euro, and Flybe Nordic was rebranded as Nordic Regional Airlines (NORRA).

In June 2019, the ATR-72-500 fleet transferred to Finnair’s fleet, with NORRA operating it on contract. Finnair’s fleet manager remembers the cabin renovation and painting project carried out in Tallinn over 2019-2020.

The first modified aircraft arrived from Tallinn to Helsinki in the dark of the night and it was brought straight inside the hangar. We had managed to keep the modification project a secret, and no pictures of it had been published in advance. The flight arrived in Helsinki later than planned, but thanks to that, our own staff was the first to see the plane.”

There’s an amusing side-story about the registration. If the registration were in Russian cyrillic, он-атр reads as ON-ATR. In Russian, “on” means “he”, so this literally reads “He (is) ATR”; amused plane spotters have commented that this could be read as the plane registration showing that the aircraft self-identifies as an ATR, but only in Russian.

Airbus A350-941

Registration: OH-LWC

At Helsinki, I boarded a much larger and classier aircraft. OH-LWC as manufactured in November 2015 under the serial number 20. It was delivered to Finnair on the 31st of December 2015 and flew its first flight three days later. Finnair’s Director of Fleet Management explained in a company interview that Finnair ordered the A350 in 2006, long before it was even in its testing phase. It was meant to be like an A330neo but at the request of the airlines, the A350 was redesigned from scratch.

However, OH-LWC was among the nine Finnair A350s with issues with the cabin. FlightGlobal reported in June 2017 that Finnair CEO Pekka Vauramo stated “the only thing we don’t like is the finish of the cabin,” citing issues with the seats, lavatories and kitchens. In June 2017, Airbus agreed to redo the interiors during the first major maintenance round.

FlyerTalk forum members documented the resolution: “In June 2017 it was announced that Airbus has accepted responsibility for the quality issues and will replace every seat on every plane delivered until that point in time (9 birds). The refurbish will take place during the first round of major maintenance round.”

OH-LWC is currently configured with 46 business class seats, 43 premium economy seats and 208 economy seats. I like to think that some travel god had noticed my travels and felt sorry for me, as I was lucky enough to get upgraded to business class, which was marvelous. I even slept for a few hours.

Airbus A321-211

Registration N170US

My last flight was an American Airways A321 for the short hop from Dallas to El Paso; at one hour forty minutes, it was the kind of short hop that reminds you just how big Texas is. N170US was delivered new to US Airways in May 2001. During the pandemic, it was parked in Philadelphia and then Tulsa before returning to service in December 2020.

N170US has a notable incident a few years ago. On the 12th of February 2022, the A321 was departing Cancun for a passenger flight to Charlotte, North Carolina. As it was climbing away, the aircraft struck several birds. After checking systems, the pilots decided to continue their flight. They landed safely and N170US suffered only minor damage, which was repaired at Charlotte. The aircraft was back to work just two hours later.

I departed Buenos Aires in the late afternoon of the 2nd of December.

I landed in El Paso in the early evening of the 4th of December.

So it certainly felt like two days travel, with a brief break in the middle in which I spent six hours in my own bed, but technically, I guess it counts as three days if I shifted all the timezones into UTC. I make it 30 hours in the air, which isn’t really a big enough number for what it felt like, if you ask me.

I shared my journey with 30-year-old narrowbodies still flying reliably, 13-year-old regional turboprops at mid-life, 10-year-old jumbo jets representing the twilight of the four-engine era, and modern composite widebodies defining the future of long-haul travel.

The only bright side was that I didn’t seem to suffer from as much jetlag as I usually do. I suspect that the truth is that my circadian rhythm was beyond wrecked, having been dragged behind passenger aircraft across three continents before I was finally dumped in a Texas terminal like mishandled luggage.