I just stumbled upon an excellent video of the legendary US airline Braniff. Although a little grainy, the footage shows the airline’s famous ‘Big Orange’ Boeing 747, as well as a few of the carrier’s brightly-coloured Boeing 727-100s and -200s. Enjoy!

FedEx Express this week retired another one of its Boeing 727-200 freighters by donating it to University of Alaska Anchorage’s Aviation Maintenance Program.

FedEx has done this across the country with a number of its retired fleet, and chose to fly this particular one – N492FE – to Anchorage. But that’s where it gets interesting, as the university’s students didn’t want it at the large Ted Stevens International Airport, but the much smaller Merril Field. In this video, you can watch the aircraft make two low-passes before landing on the short 4,000′ runway in spectacular fashion.

In 2008 I was lucky enough to visit Isafjordur in the remote north of Iceland, whilst on my honeymoon. It’s a spectacular place, and even better for the enthusiast is that its tiny airport is like the old Kai Tak in Hong Kong. Aircraft approaching need to hug the mountain, and then make a tight turn. And on takeoff, it’s an immediate turn to avoid hitting the mountain dead ahead!

I recently found this video showing a Fokker 50 departing Isafjordur and making that turn. Enjoy!

Here’s a fascinating video where the camera is strapped to the nosewheel of a Boeing 777F and facing backwards. It shows the aircraft on final approach and landing at Milan Bergamo Airport in Italy.

It was a sad moment when the NASA Space Shuttle was retired. And now that they’ve all been delivered to their respective museums, I’ve got another sad moment to share – the final takeoff of a Shuttle Carrier Boeing 747 in its current role. Having delivered Endeavor to Los Angeles, here you see N905NA departing the airport for the last time.

It’s standard practice for a new airliner to ‘wave goodbye’ when it leaves its place of birth. In this week’s video, we’ve got a fantastic ringside seat as a Japan Airlines (JAL) Boeing 787 departs Seattle / Everett Paine Field on delivery. Its crew rocks the aircraft’s wings in spectacular fashion immediately after take-off to say goodbye.

This video has been doing the rounds this week, and it’s pretty spectacular. If you’ve been to St. Maarten in the Caribbean, you’ll know how low big jets come over Maho Beach just before landing. Well, throw in a tropical storm and things get interesting! Enjoy…

Here’s a nice little video I came across today which shows the first Boeing 747-8 landing at Basel/Muhouse/Freiburg Airport. It is operated by Cargolux and was delivering a large item, and is clearly a large aircraft for this medium sized airport.

I just love these time-lapse videos showing aircraft being built, painted etc. So forgive me for posting another one here, but I hope you’ll enjoy all the same.

This one shows a brand new Boeing 737-800 being built for Norwegian.no, and then painted and performing its first flight. It’s fascinating to see how these aircraft are put together, and so quickly on the moving production line!

I’m probably right in saying that most of you haven’t flown on a Boeing 747-8 yet? With only Lufthansa flying the passenger version at the time of writing, and only on a couple of routes, it’s still fairly rare. So I thought this video would make a nice Best of the Web, as it shows the takeoff and climb of the aircraft – and its impressive wing flex – from onboard. Sit back and enjoy the flight!