I was watching JustPlanes’s Heathrow Memories 1998 video, and i saw an Air Macau A320. Does anyone have an explanaion for this?
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I’ll take a wild geuss and say that Air Macau serviced Heathrow with a A320…
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But Macau is near Hong Kong
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That’s a 6000 mile flight. No way.
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Leased, charter, being delivered maybe…
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Maybe they did a stop over? That would be my only guess.
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The Correct Reason: Air Macau Leased a A320 To TAP Portugal and it kept the full Air Macau livery.
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Yep. Odd that the plane isn’t in TAP livery…
If it wasn’t a long term lease it wouldn’t be very logical to do so.
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If it’s short term it won’t be
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It was a 18 month wet-lease to TAP
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Possibly being leased by another airline, perhaps?
I suggest you take a read through the thread. The answer has been posted ;)
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Yeah, sorry. I’m new to the forums and my post had to under-go the full verification scheme!
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Also note that Portugal and Macau have a very close relationship, due to them being colonised by Portugal.
This is quite cool as I’ve likely been on this aircraft. It was leased from someone (wasn’t mentioned) and Air Macau opf TAP.
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At the time I believe Macau was part of Portugal.
Yes, they were handed over to China in 1999. The aircraft operated with Air Macau until May 2014, and now its with Air Aruba or something.
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I visit my great grandma is Macau! I fly to Shangai to Macau and this is te same plane i flew on!
Wet Lease sounds like the correct solution. My guess would have been that it was there for a training flight.
Airbus planes are beeing built in Europe, so it’s not uncommon to see foreign liveries for example in Hamburg or Toulouse. Many years ago, a Air New Zealand Airbus A320 crashed far away from home in the Atlantic ocean of the coast of France during a test flight.
That Air Zealand Flight was an acceptance flight back from a lease to XL Airways, the livery got applied just before they took it back, the only way you will see these liveries is on delivery flights, test flights or leasing anyway but definitely no test flights will be done at Heathrow.