At the risk of admonishment, I hereby post a picture of S2-AET taken on the ramp in Sharjah a couple of months ago. One of the brokers using this aircraft told me that it was very popular because of the size of the main deck cargo door in enabling oversize freight to be loaded. Interesting though to have a Bangladeshi registered aircraft with both Zoom and RAK named on the fuselage, the paperwork must get tiresome

Don't get me wrong folks, this is an interesting and informative thread. I just want to avoid dozens of pix of every 1011 still flying (or not, as the case may be...)

OK, no more from me.

Hey SuperSpotter keep the info coming.

It's appreciated to know what is where & helping 2 + 2 make 5

Thanks

That Zoom Air is already out of business and the aircraft (parked in sharjah) is now being handled by Sky Capitol, another company which emerged after the disintegration of ZOOM. All the crews have already transferred to this new company to fly another L1011 soon but not likely before x'mas.

hello sir! i am in dhaka and we are flying 748s in bangladesh. r u doing cargo flights for china eastern btw???

I did see that plane in SHJ a few days ago.
Apparently I was told they are having some kind of AOC issues along with the on going engine A/D problems.
UAE is cracking down on some of these operators.
Hope the crews got paid before the plug was pulled.

Sadly, no.
Owed three months back pay, so I was just informed today, by someone in the know..
Par for the course.
A pox on these operators.

Were the crews actually under employment by Zoom or ACMI or contractors on the payroll of a headhunter?

Thanks

411, I heard that also a few weeks ago but could not confirm it.
I think these crews were under the employment of a Bangladeshi named Sabir, that was also involved with skyeyes and Sonny in BKK.
Would hope someone could confirm this to help other crews in the future.
This one smelled from the start.

Execellent advice EARL..... but yet people wont listen. With Hajj traffic expected to be 30-40% DOWN this year, it will be interesting to see if the "bottom feeders" survive...

Mutt

Seeing as this thread has ben "dead" for two months, I though you may like to see the port side of S9-GAR languishing in Dhaka, Bangladesh taken today 15th November 2009. I dont think this old bird will take to the wing again. Peering into the dark depths of the open/missing doors, she appears to be interiorless.

Wasn't this the bird that had the insides removed and 'converted' to freight config? Only problem was the freight had to bulk loaded through the passenger doors you see in the photo!!

This is the "infamous" "Natalie", I wrote about her in a previous thread. My first dealings with this aircraft were in Kampala where it was parked for a few months on one of the few refuelling bays. Caused me a lot of grief trying to get my numerous frames turned round. Technicians were working on it and it attempted to do a couple of flights, flowers/fish to Europe, I think, but not very successfully as it didn't have a cargo door although the interior had been stripped out, consequently loading took forever! The authorities tried to get the "owners/operators" to remote park it down near the old terminal building (from "raid on Entebbe" fame) but to no avail. Anyway it was eventually kicked out and reappeared on the cargo ramp at DXB and then on to Ras Al Kheimah where it must have had a collision of some sort as there was damage to one of the belly hold doors. Now she reappears, what next?

Duane Egli tried to convert ex LTU TriStar D-AERP in the same way. It sat on the ramp at Ostend forever, stripped of an interior. LWA Engineers tried to install some sort of bulkhead using H-beams from a local DIY-store, painted zinc-chromate green to give it an aviation appearance. It left somewhere in 2002 to be scrapped in Opa Locka, not before an engine failure forced it to land in Manston... I guess these "converted" pax aircraft just don't make it as decent freighters...

It depends how you do your conversions.

An approved and certified professional conversion works fine.

D.I.Y. jobbies, done on a Saturday night in the backyard are usually doomed, in every sense of the word!

Just on a point of order, not even the Marshall converted L1011 freighter can/does exceed its original pax designed floor load limit.

This "Natali" was actually "reconfigured", not converted, - like so many other operators do/used to do. Pax by day and bulk-loader by night.

"Natali" has aircraft grade riffled alluminium floor coverings fixed to the original floor over the original floor covering, obviously with carpets removed. No new holes or bolts.

Egli used sheets of wooden ply-wood to cover the floor.

These "reconfigured" L1011's however fell flat with the/a cargo bulkhead requirement. The home-made installations does not meet manufacturers design specifications/requirement, and the manufacturer and few authorised STC holders are/were not even prepared to talk to these operators. In short these were backyard conversions for which there is no STC and no official approvals.

Egli did well with his bulkloaders initially out of Ostend and when they complained, out of the UAE to Africa and Bangladesh. When the UAE started turning on the pressure he relocated to Chad where his machines eventualy expired.

"Natali" is a model 200 with -524 engines and had lots of potential, last operated by Tradewinds and then placed in "hibernation" just a few hours after a C-Check. Soon after she was bought by the new owner and after it started flying it quickly became clear why Tradewinds had parked her. The No 3 engine was bad and immediately started giving problems up to when "Natali" made an emergency landing in Sabina Ghoken (Ankara).

It stood in Ankara for about 18 months before positioning to Bangladesh where the owner was promised registration and an CofA. Since then its seems the Bangladesh CAA have gotten cold feet and it has never flown successfully again and is now stuck in Dhaka, probably for good.

In Africa 55 tons loaded on skids took about 8 hours to load and even longer to off-load. In Europe about double that time.

Just a reminder:

November 16, 1970 thirty nine years ago today:

First flight of the L-1011.

Great info AAL on Natali.
As an aside and going off this original thread (slightly), there are now four Tristars parked in Ras al Khaimah, two on the TZ register, one registered HS-SEC and an new incumbent, N388LS ex Las Vegas Sands corp. Does anyone know of their fate??
A further aside I wont post it here because a select few get rather annoyed apparently but here is a link to N388LS taken yesterday 16/11 in RAK:-
http://newimages.fotopic.net/?iid=1y...800&quality=80

The HS-SEC register which has SKYEYES painted on the side was in Fujarah back in May impounded for a number of things.
This aircraft leased operator is a man named Sonny out of BKK.
Which is or was in cahoots with a Bangladeshi named Sabir, also tied with zoom aviation which was just shut down by the UAE GCAA.
More to this story is that the real owner of this aircraft a European company went to court 2 years ago or longer because Sonny was not paying the lease payments, the thai courts ruled that if he was trying and made some very, very small effort to pay that was enough.
The real owner is a company out of Europe named Atlantic or something close to that, feel free to correct me on this name as I am not sure of the correct spelling.
But I did work for these scammers for 6 weeks, almost 2 years ago when they only paid 70 percent of the agreed salary I left and went to another job.
The company was never honest in anything, same as Thaisky with the L-1011.