Sunday, May 29, 2022

Malta, Orchard Road, a Fokker 100 and a B727

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Well hello again folks. Here`s a few cards that arrived this past week. First it`s two from Malta and one from Singapore. David`s first card is a look at various views of Valletta, the capital of the island nation of Malta.  


David used 2 of 4 stamps in a set showing Maltese Buses. 



This is David`s second Malta card. It is a sunset look at Ta`Pinu Sanctuary, an architectural masterpiece of a shrine located about 700 metres from the village of Gharb on the island of Gozo, the sister island of Malta. The present building opened in 1920 but the shrine site dates back to 1534.


 This time David used the other two Maltese Buses stamps.




Next up is Jobbo`s card of Orchard Road , a busy, popular tourist shopping strip alongside some of Singapore`s first-class hotels. Clearly missing from this view is the  Ion Orchard shopping mall.


For one enquiring mind, no this card is not from My Lovely Teena, my partner of 50 years and wife of almost 48 years. Jobbo used 2 stamps on this one. On the left, from 2003 is 1 of 4 stamps showing different Singapore Police. On the right  is 1 of 9 stamps issued in 2007 showing Youth Uniforms.


My next couple of cards are all Aviation aircraft cards, joining all the many other cards in my Aircraft and  Airlines on Postcards Collection. All of them were sent by Jean Pierre. First is an Aviacsa Fokker 100 registered as XA-RKM. It is shown on the tarmac in Monterrey, Mexico in Feb of 1993. The card was mailed from Cancun, Mexico. 

Aviacsa was a Mexican airline founded on May 5, 1990 and operated until May 4, 2011. It had a fleet of 20 aircraft and served 8 destinations. XA-RKM had its first flight in Jun2 of 1991. During its flying days it saw operations with Aviacsa, TAM, Mexicana and Sol de Paraguay. It was withdrawn from service in 2012. The Dutch aircraft maker Fokker produced 278 of the aircraft from 1985 until 1996 and 15 operators worldwide flew them.


  Jean Pierre used a 2021 stamp, 1 of 13 in a Definitive set highlighting Handicrafts. 


This next card shows a Turkish Airlines cargo B727 at Basel-Mulhouse Freiburg airport in the French Alsace region in 1996. Turkish Airlines is the national flag carrier airline of Turkey. As of August 2019, it operates scheduled services to 315 destinations in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, making it the largest mainline carrier in the world by number of passenger destinations. 

The Boeing 727 was produced between 1962 and 1984. Its first commercial flight was with Eastern Air Lines on Feb 1, 1964 and its last was in Jan 2019 between Zahedan and Tehran. Even though the B727 was one of the noisiest jetliners 1832 were built. 

My first experience with the B727 was in the mid 1970s in Goose Bay . Eastern Air Lines stopped in quite often to pick up and drop off American personal and families based at Goose Air Base. Later in the early 1980s  , I was stationed at Stephenville and Air Canada operated a B727 between YUL, YJT and YQX. 727s were quite common in those days. 



Jean Pierre used a 2022 stamp that was issued to showcase Turkey`s Combat Covid Campaign.



I have one more but will hold it for next time. So that`s all for this time. Thanks go out to David, Jobbo, Jean Pierre. Take care.

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