fun fact: LX-ACV

LX-ACV is an old Boeing Converted Freighter or short BCF, which was in a former life a passenger aircraft, therefore the long upper deck, the big cargo door on the aft left is fitted then.
after conversion to a B747-400BCF it kept flying cargo and still is, it's in pretty good maintenance shape with everything functioning and performing a perfect flight today from Novosibirsk/Russia to Luxembourg encountering the first snow of the season in Novo and the first actual Low Visibility Autoland (CATIIIB-NDH) without minimum and braking automatically to taxi speed at Lux.

nevertheless this aircraft is bound for the scrapyard next year because the upcoming big check, where it has to be dismanteld and basically rebuild except for the airframe, is too expensive, even more expensive than buying another used 747-400!
you see that the age of an aircraft with proper maintenance is usually not the problem, the final flight to scrapping is just set up by the finance departement,  not by the mechanics.

you can see her landing at Novo in the morning at -5˚C after a little snow shower today.

next is an aerial of the city Wroclaw/Poland which was one of only three cities today with clear weather on the way, the rest of Russia and Europe was under a thick fog layer. the airport of Wroclaw is visible in the lower right corner, which is where i landed several times with a Canadair Jet while flying for Lauda Air out of Vienna - always a bit nostalgic to see the old smaller airports where i don't fly to anymore...

ending this post is an example of how we get the weather via Satcom, starting with ELLX is the actual weather of Luxembourg in the morning, which decodes to
time 08hrs20mins UTC, 9.20 local time, wind variable 3 kts (6km/h), variable in direction from 100 to 180˚magnetic, meteoroligical visibility 100m with an Runway Visual Range (RVR) of 175m (thats taking the strong lamps of the runway lighting and the runway direction into account - minimum for us is to land is 125m) FG means fog, and VV002 is a vertical visibility of 200 ft or about 70m with temperature and dew point at 4˚C and an airpressure to set the altimeters of 1027mbar. NOSIG is one of the airborn acronyms, that we love so much, for no significant change expected within the next two hours.

on days like today we take a little extra fuel to be able to do some holdings at the destination and keep a closer look at the weather-trends during the flight, but in the end if the airport is capable, the 747 does an excellent job in landing itself and braking, leaving just the taxi in to the crew, just as it should be, we can relax and enjoy the show of a few lights appearing in the fog.
have a nice week,
cu - nuck