A ton more Star MegaDo videos
Sure, it has taken way longer than it probably should have, but I’ve finally managed to get a bunch more videos uploaded.  These are mostly from the presentation on Friday from Thierry Antinori, Lufthansa’s Executive Vice President Marketing & Sales and Member of the Executive Board though the first one is the opening greeting from Lufthansa CEO Wolfgang Mayrhuber.
Enjoy!
Help check presentation of the Alliance
During the charter flights, we held an on-board raffle to raise money for charity. On Friday, November 20, 2009, we delivered the first check from this campaign. It was a check for $3000, given to the Help Alliance, a charity run by Lufthansa staff members. An overview of all Help Alliance projects can be found here. The money raised for Help Alliance during the StarmegaDO is being put to use in a school project in South Africa. FlyerTalkers will be able to follow the status of the project as it progresses, and even participate more directly.
Many more event pictures now available!
![295-110309_0268[1]](http://www.starmegado.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/295-110309_02681.jpg "295-110309_0268[1]")
We’ve created a special picture blog of photos from the events. Visit them visit them here:
http:/ / www.starmegado.com / Plogger/
Feel free to click on the pictures and post comments, or select some for downloading.
More photos from the Airbus factory tour
Just a few more photos from inside the final assembly building at Toulouse…
A party on neutral ground
Following the long day of flights and tours Lufthansa was gracious enough to host us for a night cap in the Tower Lounge near gate A65 at Frankfurt International Airport.  This is one of their newer lounges and it is quite impressive.  It also is outside of the Schengen border control zone.  That meant all 200 of us had to pass though immigration to attend the party.  Fortunately they had warned the border police about our plans so there were a couple guys there ready to work with us.
At that point we were no longer really in Germany from an immigration perspective.  But we weren’t really anywhere else, either.  We were essentially nowhere and having a phenomenal time!
And then, about an hour later when the lounge closed, it was back into Germany and another pass through the border check and another stamp on the passport.  We visited two countries during the day – Norway and France – and did it with nary a glance at most passports.  But to get to a party 500 meters from the gate took two stamps.  Certainly strange, but also a great story.
Star Mega Do coverage in the WSJ
Check it out…
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703808904574529622404278810.html#articleTabs%3Darticle
If you were always on the road and seemed to live on airplanes, would you spend your vacation visiting airlines?
More than 200 vagabond business travelers, peripatetic frequent-flier-mile addicts and aviation enthusiasts did just that last week. Over four days, they traveled from the U.S. to Germany, Norway and France to meet with executives, pilots and mechanics at four airlines—plus representatives of aircraft manufacturer Airbus. The event, organized by members of FlyerTalk.com, a Web site that caters to frequent fliers, even included chartering a Boeing 757-300 to zip from airline hangar to airline hangar.
Plane spotting at Toulouse
What great fun to be at the factory and see the planes from so many carriers all in one place.  And there were plenty to be seen.  Check out some of these beauties:
This is the plane we were touring in all day:
Not all the planes on the ground were Airbus, but they were still cool:
Some of the bigger birds on display:
Of course, the main focus of the visit to Toulouse was plane spotting of a different kind.  We were there to tour the A380 final assembly line.  We did, and it was amazing.  More stories, video and photos from that soon.
Inspecting the crew rest bunks
As a group of mostly very frequent flyers, getting to go behind the scenes and see the other side of the operations is always interesting.  After all, we’ spend plenty of time on the customer side.  Hitting up the crew side is the next step in the adventure.  So when Lufthansa opened up access to their Technik facility – their maintenance operations – scores of our group showed up to take part. 
Among other things, the group wandered through a couple planes that were in for their regular maintenance checks.  These planes are essentially fully disassembled and then put back together, with various bits replaced and refreshed along the way.  One of the more popular scenes during these tours were the visits to the crew rest bunks.  They may not be glamorous, but they are fully flat, quiet and dark.  Not too shabby.  I could travel like that.  Then again, I’ve been in an overhead bin and didn’t think it was all that bad. 
Anyways, here are pictures of some folks having fun in the crew rest bunks:
On-board raffle totals
Money raised from the on-board raffle
The total amount of money collected was as follows:
- € 1735
- $ 2035
- $ C 50
- £ 20
At today’s exchange rate for US Dollars, that comes to just over $4700.
A hearty Thank you to all who participated! We will soon be providing more information on the distribution of the money.
Videos from Oslo and StarMegaDo
I’m not a great videographer and probably worse at video editing. But I have a bunch of content that I’ve been slowly getting uploaded. Here are a few clips from various bits of the Oslo stop.