Airbus 6 ship!!

[wiggy]

Not on Flight radar (well I can't find it but it may being "covered" by a no callsign A350 in the area ) but seen visually just now ( 1010 UTC) south Toulouse, heading south at medium level... looked like A380, Beluga XL, smaller 4 buses leading in a box formation.

Anyone know more - presumably PR/photo op.?

[DaveReidUK]

Flypast to mark Airbus's 50th anniversary.



https://www.flightglobal.com/news/ar...flypas-458511/

[wiggy]

Thanks Dave, just caught that news as you posted...never have a camera to hand when you need one

Edit to add: Looks like the weather stuffed plans up bit, it was almost completely overcast locally with some fairly beefy showers (including CBs) which apparently compromised any chance of a formation flypast by the Airbus 6 ship. I was very lucky that by complete chance I was outside the house, heard the noise, looked up and spotted them through a break in the clouds when they were up at around 12000 feet, well to the south of Toulouse. Looks like they got joined up but were never able to find a hole big enough to get the whole balbo back down to lower levels again.

https://www.ladepeche.fr/2019/05/29/...se,8227909.php

[wiggy]

Just to wrap this up fortunately there were people on the scene with cameras..some nice air to air images/video here:

https://www.ouest-france.fr/economie...france-6373958

[India Four Two]

Thanks for the link, wiggy.

That video is too good to leave buried in a URL.

You Tube

[wiggy]

India Four Two

There’s a longer promotional video embedded in this link that you might be able to work your magic on...

https://actu.fr/occitanie/toulouse_3..._24577855.html

Looking at the video I’m guessing get that was what was going on when the formation (according to Flightradar) spent some time in a holding pattern off shore of Perpignan/Montpellier....

Darn it, a lowish level fly past over Toulouse and Blagnac really would have been something to see (of course the day after the event the weather in that part of the world was mainly scattered cloud and the day after that it was completely cloud free all day...)

[India Four Two]

Specially for wiggy!

You Tube

[El Bunto]

Very nice, but quite a missed opportunity. We're at the point where adding an A300, A310 and A340 from commercial operators would have been possible to build the entire history of Airbus in the air.

For their 60th that probably won't be an option.