Boeing 307 Stratoliner (#1998) AirNautic livery
Livery by Haddock
Requires the Boeing 307 Stratoliner (commercial product) for Microsoft Flight Simulator.
About the Airline
Air Nautic (or AirNautic) was a french airline founded in 1954 that started operating in 1958.
Based in Nice and Perpignan, the airline flew passengers towards European destinations, and flew cargo between France and northern Africa.
Air Nautic was also regularly loaning its planes and crews to Air Inter and Air France, the latter later becoming the owner of Air Nautic.
Two deadly accidents and an ageing fleet of airplanes led Air Nautic into financial trouble.
On January 1st 1966, all operations stopped ; what was left of the company was taken over by Air France.
Air Nautic operated a DC-2, a DC-3, a DC-4, three DC-6, three Boeing 307 (F-BELU, F-BELY, F-BELZ), and eight Vickers Viking.
About the plane
Stratoliner #1998 was one of five SA-307B Stratoliner built for TWA.
The SA-307B had two-stage supercharged engines with cowling flaps.
It bore several registrations :
- Boeing initially registered it as NX19906 ;
- Delivered in 1940 to TWA as NX1940 "Cherokee" ;
- In 1942 it was converted to a C-75 and started its service in the USAAF as 42-88623 "Cherokee" ;
- Went back to TWA in 1944 as N1940, upgraded to the SA-307B-1 Stratoliner standard ;
- All five SA-307B-1 were bought from TWA in April 1951 by french airline Aigle Azur ; #1998 was registered F-BELU ;
- Used for a while by another french airline, AirNautic, providing charter flights in the Mediterranean, especially around Corsica.
- Bought by Compagnie Internationale de Transports Civil Aériens (CITCA) in 1965, to be leased out to operators in the Indochina peninsula, like Civil Air Transport and Commission Internationale de Contrôle (International Control Commission)
- Finally registered as XW-TFP, used by Cambodia Air Commercial and Royal Air Lao.
The pilot of XW-TFP was forced to ditch in the Mekong river on March 13, 1975, near the Laos-Thailand border while on a cargo flight between Hong Kong and Vientiane.
Both the pilot and co-pilot escaped the wreck but were captured by the communist Pathet Lao and held until May. The wreckage was still there in 1986.
Sources
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Boeing_307_Stratoliner
https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/XW-TFP/758230
https://rzjets.net/aircraft/?typeid=326
History
v0.1.0
- initial release. This livery is based on (and heavily modified from) an aeroplaneheaven livery.
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