This is a Douglas DC-3, a 1930s to 1940s propellor airliner that was one of the defining moments in air travel. Faster, safer and quieter than previous airliners, the DC-3 was one of only a few that could cross the continental United States (with three stops), and be profitable from passengers alone.
So good was the DC-3 in fact, that many are still in use today, some eighty to ninety years since they were produced. Recent bloggee Tobias Munzert is the builder behind this one, creating it beautifully Lufthansa colours.
If you’re wondering whether a 1930s American aircraft being flown by Germany’s national airline may have been a bit awkward at the time (as we were), Lufthansa was founded a decade after the end of the Second World War, when – even with jet airliners transforming air travel – the DC-3 remained a reliable and competitive aircraft for airlines across the world.
Tobias’ brick built version captures the iconic vintage airliner superbly, and there’s more to see (including a link to building instructions so can create one yourself) at his photostream. Fly over to Flickr via the link above.
Travelling home for Christmas is one of the great human experiences. All over the world people have boarded planes to visit relatives and friends from whom they have been separated. Mountains, deserts and oceans will pass underneath them, no longer a barrier to their passage, and a smiling hostess will announce ‘chicken or fish?’ before presenting them with a little tray of mostly edible content. They will stand together to watch gift-filled luggage circulate, before the festivities of Passport Control await.
OK, travelling home for Christmas sucks, but the ‘home’ part makes the ‘travel’ part entirely worthwhile. British Airways’ Boeing 777-300ERs are some of the countless aircraft that make the great Christmas migration happen, and BigPlanes 1:40 recreation captures the real airliner spectacularly. 25,000 pieces, working landing gear, flaps, and an astonishing complete mini-figure interior mean we can almost feel the Christmas-excitement in the cabin. Fly home for Christmas on BigPlanes’ British Airways Boeing via the link above. It’ll all be worth it once you’re home.
Diet America, better known as Canada, quietly produces rather more than you might think. Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, William Shatner, Michael J. Fox, Drake, and even Pamela Anderson all hail from America’s attic, whilst Trivial Pursuit, the Wonderbra, insulin, and peanut butter are all Canadian too.
Transportationally speaking, Canada is responsible for building the Toyota RAV4, the Honda Civic and CRV, a variety of boring Chryslers, and two of the most ‘American’ cars ever; the Ford GT and the Dodge Challenger. Yes, even the Hellcat.
At least half of the entries on the list above we thought were American (which speaks volumes about how uninformed the staff here at TLCB are, and/or how Canada quietly gets on with being awesome whilst America shouts loudly and frantically waves a flag back and forth), but one company we definitely did know is Canadian is the engineering giant Bombardier.
Over their 80 year history, Bombardier have produced trains, snowmobiles, ATVs, buses, military equipment and aircraft, the latter of which the company concentrates on today.
This is the Bombardier CRJ-200, pictured appropriately in Air Canada livery, and it comes from Tom Clair of Flickr. Tom has recreated the 1990s business jet beautifully in brick form, with a complete interior, opening cabin doors, and working ailerons too, plus some superbly realistic decals to replicate the aforementioned national livery.
There’s lots more of Tom’s excellent CRJ-200 to see at his Flickr photostream – fly on over via the link above, whilst we search the web for classic Wonderbra adverts. For research. We love Canada.
This incredible creation is a Boeing 777-(200), as flown by United Airlines, and built over the course of eleven months by Freezeur21 of Flickr.
Constructed in mini-figure scale (which sounds small but makes this massive), Freezeur’s 777 features opening doors, accurate landing gear (which somehow supports the model’s enormous weight), and some properly brilliant decals.
So good is the result you’d be hard-pressed to know this is Lego at first glance, but it is and you can check out more stunning images of Freezeur’s United Airlines Boeing 777-(200) at his photostream. Click the link above to climb on board.
Some Lego builders’ user names are just right. This is BigPlanes’ Emirates Airlines Airbus A380 Superjumbo, and it is really, really big.
With a wingspan of 7ft, BigPlanes’ recreation of the world’s largest passenger plane is a constructed in an almost unbelievable mini-figure scale, and uses no hidden supports, metal framework, or glue.
What it does use is tens of thousands of LEGO pieces, several electric motors, and a whole lot of LED lights to faithfully replicate Emirates’ flagship airliner, including both decks, a four-pilot cockpit, working flaps and tail control surfaces, retractable landing gear, and even powered engines.
Each class of travel is accurately represented too, from First (which features a bar, lounge, and even a waterfall fountain), through Business (with fold flat seats and individual screens), to Premium Economy (where passengers’ benefit from their knees not being a structural element of the seat in front), and finally Economy (basically a cattle-truck).
Beautiful spiral staircases link the two decks, which also include luxury bathrooms in First (and holes in the floor for Economy), galley kitchens, and even crew sleeping accommodation.
A monumental undertaking a year in the making, BigPlanes’ phenomenal determination and skill has resulted in surely one of the finest Lego creations ever built. Buy your ticket to fly Emirates at his astonishing ‘LEGO Emirates Airbus A380’ album on Flickr, where forty incredible images are available to view. It’s probably worth spending a little extra to upgrade to Premium Economy though…
After over 50 years of service, Boeing’s mighty 747 is starting to be retired from fleets around the world. The 747 first entered service with the now defunct Pan Am airline in 1970, after they commissioned Boeing to build a plane 2.5 times larger than their existing airliners.
The aim was to reduce expenses by a third per passenger to bring long-distance air travel to the masses, and the 747 fulfilled its brief so well that over 1,500 have been produced to date, with the design single-handedly defining the ‘jumbo jet’ era.
747 production finally ceases next year, as the industry has moved away from ‘jumbo’ aircraft in favour of smaller more fuel efficient airliners, with two-engined planes now capable of flying just as far as their ageing four-engined counterparts.
Anything that reduces air travel pollution is a good thing, but we’ll miss the old ‘jumbo’. Flickr’s saabfan2013 will too by the looks of it, and has created this neat brick-built homage to the 747 in double-decker configuration and Iberia livery.
There are more images of saabfan’s excellent Iberia Boeing 747 to see on Flickr, where you can also find a link to the model on LEGO Ideas should you want the opportunity to place the iconic Jumbo Jet on your desk too. Click the link above to take off.
Three engines are better than two. They might even be better than four, just because of how cool they look. This is the Boeing 727-200, the brand’s 1960s narrow-body airliner and its only tri-jet. Over 1,800 727s were built between 1962 and 1984, with a handful still in use today by some airlines it’s probably best to avoid.
This marvellous Lego recreation of the 727-200 comes from a time when they were in regular service with mainstream airlines however, being recreated beautifully in Southwest’s 1980s livery.
Previous bloggee Big Planes is the builder, and like his past work there is a complete mini-figure interior, retractable landing gear, and functioning flaps too, with much more to see at his photostream. Head south by Southwest via the link above.
The world isn’t flying very much at the moment. With countries locked down due to Coronavirus many airlines have had to ground their entire fleets, with rows of parked airliners visible from – ironically – the air at airports globally.
Mini-figures seem unaffected however, as this marvellous Southwest Boeing 737-800 by Flickr’s BigPlanes is packed! Southwest are America’s busiest domestic carrier and use a fleet of only 737s. The airline has over seven-hundred, making it the world’s largest 737 fleet, and BigPlanes has recreated one their hundreds of aircraft with a complete mini-figure scale interior and a kinda-brick-built livery (a few decals have helped) that’s beautifully accurate.
Head south via BigPlanes ‘Southwest Boeing 737-800’ album at the link above.
TLCB bold statement of the weekend; the Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde is the greatest aircraft ever made. And simultaneously one of the worst…
Concorde is one of only two airliners ever to fly supersonic (the other of which was basically a Soviet copy), with a top speed of over 1,300mph. That’s twice the speed of sound, and it enabled passengers to travel from New York to London in three hours, meaning that check-in probably took longer than the transatlantic flight.
This remarkable feat was enabled by Concorde’s incredible delta wing design and the four Rolls Royce Olympus engines engines that took the plane to around 60,000ft, an altitude 50% higher than other commercial airliners.
However despite this height the aircraft was spectacularly loud, and not just because of its engines. A sonic boom – caused by the pressure wave that builds up around an object travelling above the speed of sound – is not a one-off ‘bang’, it’s continuous, travelling with the object. This meant that Concorde was only allowed to travel at supersonic speeds over water, and thus almost all of the world’s airports refused to take it.
With costs spiralling to over £1 billion (in the 1970s!), the British and French governments effectively bought the programme, with each country’s national carrier (British Airways and Air France) becoming the only operators to fly the plane. From an original sales expectation in the low hundreds, just fourteen aircraft were built (plus six test units), entering service between Europe and America.
With Concorde only able to take around 100 passengers at a time, tickets were enormously expensive – costing dozens of times more than a conventional transatlantic flight. However in the booming 1980s both operators were finally able to turn a profit, as Concorde’s wealthy passengers were happy to pay the huge price for the speed and status offered by a supersonic transatlantic flight.
It couldn’t last forever though, and with Concorde ageing, fuel prices increasing, and alternative flights becoming more luxurious and much cheaper on conventional aircraft, the business case for supersonic passenger flights became less viable. A fatal accident in 2000 (Concorde’s only such loss in three decades of flying) and the global demand slump after the September 11th attacks led to the aircraft retiring in 2003, and with it the era of supersonic transatlantic flight was over.
This spectacular replica of the world’s most iconic airliner is the work of BigPlanes of Flickr, whose incredible recreation of Air Force One appeared here at the start of the year. With a fully fitted mini-figure interior including kitchen, cockpit, and bathrooms, a working ‘droop nose’ (which allowed the pilots to see the runway as the plane approached), functioning landing gear, afterburners, and a wonderful brick-built classic British Airways livery, BigPlanes’ Concorde is one of the finest Lego aircraft that we have ever featured.
It’s a fitting tribute to one of the most ambitious engineering masterpieces of modern times, and there’s more to see of his phenomenal model at his photostream. Click the link above to head out over the Atlantic Ocean and go supersonic.
Nope, not an annoying Star Wars droid (we’re not Bricknerd), but this gorgeous classic Douglas DC-3C airliner, recreated beautifully by previous bloggee Luis Pena. Built for display at Chile’s Air and Space International Fair alongside his previously featured models, Luis’ creation captures LAN-Chile’s iconic 1940s airliners – that were converted from military transports after the Second Wold War – in wonderful detail. If you’re one of our Chilean readers you can see Luis’ Douglas DC-3C along with his other historic Lego aircraft at FIDEA Santiago, and if not you can see all the imagery at his Flickr album by clicking here.
This gorgeous Lockheed Constellation airliner was discovered by one of our Elves on Flickr today. Built by the aptly-named BigPlanes it’s a fully fitted mini-figure scale replica of the iconic triple-tailed aircraft, complete with a highly detailed cabin including cockpit, toilets and even a kitchen!
The Constellation first flew in the early 1940s and was produced until 1958, by which point jets were quickly replacing piston engined aircraft. The ‘Connie’s four piston engines were eighteen-cylinders each, and allowed the plane to fly at over 375mph (faster than a Mitsubishi Zero fighter!) and for 3,500 miles.
The Constellation was also the first mainstream aircraft to feature a pressurised cabin, and saw deployment by both the military and civilian airlines with carriers including Air France, Pan-Am, and – as shown here – Trans World Airlines.
Still in limited service today we think the Constellation is one of the most beautiful airliners of all time, and BigPlanes’ Lego recreation certainly does it justice. Head over to his photostream via the link above check out more images of his spectacular model including some wonderful interior shots.
