Project 61: Quadjets + RTW!
Taking a break from the usual programming (ha) to revisit an odyssey a jaunt I did this time last year, which I titled "Project 61: Quadjets + RTW!"
Lufthansa has been meaning to sunset the A340-600 fleet for a while now, and as of May last year it's assumed that NS25 was going to be it. As such, I toyed with the idea of flying the remaining quadjets (A340, B747, A380 families) in one trip.
What follows are largely copied from my public reports - if you know where to look... I'll only pick out the background stuff and not rehash the flight experiences.
One of the earliest (and arguably easiest) options was to fly the B744 to Frankfurt, then Shanghai on the A346, and finally back on the A388. For completeness, the following 'thin' options (looping at FRA with similar opposing directions) were considered but not actioned upon largely due to poor transit timings:
SIN-DEL-FRA-SIN (A388, A346, B744)
SIN-FRA-RUH-DXB-SIN (B744, A346, B7M9, A388)
I even entertained the idea of doing this with Lufthansa's NW25 schedule, when they start flying A346 to JFK. This planted the idea of super-sizing a three-flight trip into a round-the-world one:
SIN-ICN-JFK-FRA-SIN (B78X, B748, A346, A388)
SIN-PEK-JFK-FRA-SIN (B78X, B748, A346, A388)
Later, I stumbled upon the fact that Lufthansa flies the B744 to Vancouver; and Air Canada has reintroduced direct-to-Vancouver flights as of last year, after Singapore Airlines stopped two years ago...
It is too perfect an itinerary to pass up; not only do I get to turn this into a round-the-world trip, but the transit times at two cities I get to revisit after many years (Vancouver, Shanghai) are also good for daytime sightseeing.
The icing on the cake is Lufthansa's direct purchase for the one-stop ticket from Vancouver to Shanghai via Frankfurt ('the long way') on one PNR, instead of having to deal with two PNRs and any unexpected setbacks associated. I just got to reposition myself to Vancouver, using the most efficient connection...
Presenting the final itinerary (local times):
T 09:10 SIN-YVR AC20 B789 (14h55m)
T 09:05 YVR (7h10m stopover)
T 16:15 YVR-FRA LH493 B744 (9h45m)
T+1 11:00 FRA (4h5m stopover)
T+1 15:05 FRA-PVG LH728 A346 (12h10m)
T+2 09:15 PVG (7h35m stopover)
T+2 16:50 PVG-SIN SQ833 A388 (5h30m)
T+2 22:20 SIN
Project 61
Flight time: 42h20m
Layover: 18h50m
Total: 61h10m
In hindsight, attempting the same this year would have been much more expensive given the change in geopolitical situation, and that's before factoring that Lufthansa is only using the A346 for US cities now. NS26 is also finally going to be the last season for Lufthansa's A346 fleet!
Just to link this to the restart of my online personal projects, I decided to quickly whip up an interactive visualizer of this trip. In addition, you can also find more of such projects under the new Fun page. 🙂
I'm aware of whether I should walk-my-talk and also publish the agent interactions I had for these projects, but I'm just gonna handwave them aside for a few reasons:
These are personal projects where I'm only working for my own benefits.
These are admittedly not long-lived projects.
The outputs are ridiculously simple: the
index.htmland accompanying JSON data do not exceed 300 kb.If I'm doing more of such projects and start evolving a harness for them - then I might consider publishing that for posterity. Not for these two sites currently.
Will get back to SPIRIT and agentic loops next!