Saturday, June 7, 2014

Virgin Australia B737-700 VH-VBY Spotted at Rockhampton Airport - Minus its LiveTV Antenna Radome

When he wasn't chasing the RAAF Balloon (see Blog post below), local plane spotter 'IAD' popped out to Rockhampton Airport on Wednesday 4 June and captured some great late afternoon photos of Virgin Australia Boeing B737-700 VH-VBY as it departed to Brisbane as VOZ1248.



Notable about VH-VBY is that it has recently lost the prominent radome for Virgin's LiveTV in-flight entertainment antenna.


VH-VBY is shown below in April this year still with the radome.

File photo taken by Dave  ©

Virgin Australia is progressively rolling out Wireless In-flight Entertainment across its domestic and international short haul fleet.  This state-of-the-art system provides passengers with access to hundreds of hours of movies, TV shows and music, all available on their own device (with restrictions). 

Meanwhile, also captured by 'IAD' late on Wednesday were a pair of hard-working med-evac providers in the form of Capricorn Helicopter Rescue Service (CHRS) (Australian Helicopters) Bell 412EP VH-EPR "Rescue 300" and Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) Hawker Beechcraft B200 VH-FDM "FlyDoc 478".



Incidentally, the local Rockhampton Morning Bulletin newspaper ran the photo below with the caption that the RFDS CEO was at Rockhampton Airport this week to turn the first sod for the new purpose-built patient transfer facility at Rockhampton Airport.  


The new facility - to be built next to the existing facility on the General Aviation (GA) side of the Airport - will provide patients being transferred to and from Rocky with a more comfortable waiting area for family and carers accompanying them.  The facility is set to be operational later this year.

All photos taken by 'IAD'  ©

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