Viva Las Vegas

A short 1 hour and 5 minute flight from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in an America West Airlines B-747-400 late 1980s livery.

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Thanks for flying America West.

"The Queen," in all her glory! And, beautiful colors to boot!

Very nice, Larry! Thanks for sharing her! - Rick :cool:

Cool shots.

+1 for the retro America West Airlines!

Darren, it's a 400. From the readme file:

America West Old Livery

This is a repaint of the FSPainter Boeing 747-400

(model and air files ARE included)in the America West old

livery which I wish to dedicate to my relatives and freinds in Arizona. America West was operating some 742's(I think 2) but I guess they weren't very economical so AW stopped using them. 747 model and base textures by FSPainter, America West textures by Pantee Farhangi.

Funny how different people have opinions based upon their experiences. Being stationed in Santa Ana Ca. in the sixties I could never imagine that big a bird only carrying people from La to Vegas! However, in 1987-8 I made several trips from Kentucky to Komatsu Japan where 144" stamping press lines were being built for our auto stamping and assembly plant in Kentucky.

The drill was, you'd land at Narita Airport on a many hour 747 flight from the US west coast. Then you'd take the "free" mass transit train from the international area to the local. Upon arriving in the local area you'd then board another 747 for the few (250+-) hundred miles trip to Komatsu on the west coast of Japan.

Going west in the morning the plane was nearly empty. But in the morning at Komatsu the east bound flight to Tokyo was always overbooked. In the evening, the reverse was true. Why, hundreds upon hundreds of Japanese traveled to Tokyo to shop and also to commute to and from work daily! !!!:eek::eek: Reserved seating?? NO, lots of people with brief cases and/or huge shopping bags, yes. Those 747 flights were exactly like riding a city bus or subway in any major city of the world!

Actually in California in the 60's we had a similar experience while flying Air California. They had a "bus route" of Electras which rotated California in a counter-clockwise rotation seven days a week. If you wanted to go from LAX to Santa Ana you got aboard and paid your (10 bucks, frankly I think that's right but don't remember for sure.) In about 30-40 minutes you arrived in Santa Ana and got off the plane. But if you wanted to go from Santa Ana to LAX, you paid the same ten bucks or so, but it took hours because you started on the bottom of the loop. You left Santa Ana and landed in San Diego, Riverside, etc. etc. before you finally came over the top and arrived at LAX. If you traveled 40 miles of several hundred miles, the price was the same.

Michael,

I don't think American West flew a 747 to Vegas, at least I couldn't find any sign of it in their timetables. I just chose to do so because I like the livery and I hadn't flown a 747 for a while. I imagine that 727s and 737s would have been used in the 80s-90s (737s probably still today).

You are right there are some weird air routes out there, many that seem to make no sense. I guess that as long as passengers are happy and airlines make money crazy routes will continue to exist. But some are imposed by various bureaucracies. In my own experience when I served in the Foreign Service back home at State Department the travel people booked me from Dulles to Atlanta to Dallas to Albuquerque when a direct flight existed. It was cheaper, but about two and a half hours longer. Another time I was booked Washington National to Pittsburgh to O'hare to Salt Lake City to San Jose. Again cheaper, but I could have gone Dulles to San Fran. and driven to San Jose and saved almost four hours. There were many occasions that are just too painful to recount. My butt and back hated the travel folks. :(

Jack,

Hope your dreams for the FS2020 scenery come true. :)