I often see friends posting pictures of themselves on airplanes in their WeChat Moments or Instagram Stories, but most of them put mosaics on their boarding passes or photos. However, as a flight enthusiast, I always try to find out the exact flight number, as well as the origin and destination of the flight.
Today’s challenge is, can you tell which flight this picture is from?
At first, I felt clueless when I saw this picture. I focused on the display screen on the right, but the screen only showed switching between English, Chinese, and Japanese, which didn’t seem to have any useful information. After zooming in and looking closely, I found that the aircraft is a Boeing 777-300, and the operating airline is Air New Zealand. Combined with the fact that it was posted 1 hour ago, meaning it took off about an hour ago. Of course, if you didn’t know it was an Air New Zealand aircraft, you could also guess from the language switching on the display that the airline should be from an English-speaking country. Adding the crucial information my friend wrote, an 8-hour flight, the information is sufficient.
I opened Flightradar24 and started searching for all live flights of Air New Zealand that took off about an hour ago and had a flight duration of around 8 hours. Finally, I found it.
NZ175
Aircraft type: Boeing 777-319(ER)
Registration: ZK-OKN
Route: Auckland - Perth
I remembered a screenshot I saw on WeChat Moments before, which only showed departure from PVG and the boarding gate was DXX. Since the D gates at PVG are for international flights, I clicked on all PVG departures and checked the boarding gates. Finally, I matched it to the Shanghai to Singapore flight.
You might think I’m doing something very boring, but I find this process very interesting. It teaches me to pay attention to all the details and to make good use of tools.