Retro AI memories, late 2000's

[deeknow]

One of the joys of this hobby of ours is being able to download a skin for an aircraft from a previous era and take it for a spin. The immersion takes a hit tho if you see AI about on the ground from a different period. If you're really serious it's worth the effort to source or create complete AI configs for airlines so you have a more believable set of AI for company. So, this week I spent a few evenings sucking down flight-plans and textures and built up a swag of BGLs using AIFP for the late 2000's period, mainly 2008-2010. I love this period coz there were still a lot of more classic airliners about, both prop and jet, and some great older liveries that either hadn't been painted over yet by the marketing team or were on airframes that were about to be retired anyway.

Here's some sample screenies at various NZ and AU airports as sported by airlines in this time. Gone but not forgotten

the good ole' Pacific Wave was in vogue, the fabulous ZK-FRE "Holidays" livery was still in circulation, and my fave airliner the 733 was the machine of the day for domestic inter-city action...



my fave prop the small but mighty 1900D was plying the short-haul stuff before they were withdrawn ...



ANZ were still flying the beasty 767s for medium-haul out of the international terminals, and we had some cool liveries like the Malaysian 777 here leaving Auckland, along with A340's which we aren't common now



"Queens" were kings too ...



Singapore were firing their Megatops down under...



BA, United and of course Qantas flying the big birds out of YSSY...



Emirates were still operating A340s out of ChCh



And Air Pacific's classic livery was still a thing before Fiji Airways replaced it



Pacific Blue had their NZ operation .. until they didnt...



Malaysian still had 777s in their fleet..



And United were still rocking the old 'Battleship' livery..



Continuing the over-the-ditch theme, Qantas was operating their 767s, and Eva their old livery...



Virgin Blue was a thing before VOZ took over..



V-Australia was doing long-haul to the US in their 777s



And at the other end of the spectrum, Tiger Australia was in the mix



And OzJet was about to wind up their show which would see the end of their fleet of 737-200s



There's a heap of others I've either finished collating or just haven't grabbed screenies for, may do that next weekend.

Hope these bought back some memories

[Splitpin]

Amazing stuff deeknow ....those were the days alright.
I loved the old Captain Sim 73's , external drives full of repaints ...
Great post dude....

[deeknow]

Amazing stuff deeknow ....those were the days alright.
I loved the old Captain Sim 73's , external drives full of repaints

Cheers mate. Yeah were some great liveries. I've never really flown the 744 PAX models in sim but now has piqued my interest after installing these AI paints to do some retro flying, so amassing repaints for the POSKY model (sadly never managed to score the PMDG 744 for P3D before they withdrew it from sale)

When I was crook a few weeks back also did a (almost) full Middle-East and USA 2008-2009 AI rebuild so may post some screenies of that, bringing back lots of USA pre-merger airlines and liveries from that period.

[simonh]

Superb shots deeknow,
A little personal history, on a couple of trips to Auckland, I flew with Pacific Blue.
One trip was on PBJ and , if my memory is correct, another trip was on PBM...I think.
I flew from Hamilton to Auckland on a 1900, EAC, and flew from Auckland to Christchurch on 737, SJC, which I think had been repainted from Freedom Air colours.
Thanks for the memories.

[deeknow]

Nice one Simon, cheers. I never actually flew on domestic PB, or even Qantas domestic (that was a thing too right) in NZ?

You remind me tho of a 1900 flight I did take from HLZ to AKL at the time, seemed crazy for such a short hop but we were heading from AKL down to Queenstown. Anyway, as we were boarding the Beech at HLZ I knocked my shin on something before I got seated. Thought nothing of it but at about mid-flight before we got to AKL it felt sore so slid my jeans up and here was this massive golf ball sized swelling at the same spot in my shin. Freaked out at first but what can ya do? By the time we landed, probably 15mins later (such a short flight) the swelling had receeded. Guess it was an air-pressure thing.

[Charl]

Monumental, Dino, hope you are mending well.
Brings a tear to the eye, my gargantuan FS9 (which will never be repeated) had all AI traffic worldwide.
Sobering thought that 2010 can be the basis for a "retro-sim"!

[deeknow]

Monumental, Dino, hope you are mending well.

So far so good. Got a stress test this Wednesday at the hospital so make sure the blood flow is OK, that will either a Green-light for me so I can get back into some exercise, or something else which will mean another procedure at some point. Am hoping for the former

Brings a tear to the eye, my gargantuan FS9 (which will never be repeated) had all AI traffic worldwide.
Sobering thought that 2010 can be the basis for a "retro-sim"!

Haha, yes is a bit of a flash-back aye. My current AI install is ridiculous really, have hundreds of contemporary AIG one-click-install managed airlines, dozens of hand crafted ones they don't cover, and now close to a hundred that I've swapped in for that 2008-2009 period that are either manual based on old FS9 flight-plans and livery downloads or WOAI ZIP installs from the period. Written a few helper tools to swap old and new whenever I wanna do something in either period, and to validate the aircraft.cfg files.

Has been a fun process really.

[Splitpin]

Look after yourself fella...