Airplane, meet truck. Truck, fall over and play dead. That’s the gist of what you’ll see if you watch this video of a South African Airways 737-800 landing in Lusaka, Zambia. A reader of the blog alerted me to this a couple days ago, and I definitely think it’s worth a look. The impact happens just after the one minute mark.

This thread questions who is ultimately at fault, and I’d have to go with the pilot on this one. I mean, the truck may not have been parked in the right place, but it was NOT MOVING. Then again, an Enterprise shuttle van hit my stopped car at the airport earlier this year and they’re saying it’s not their fault, so who knows. (Note to everyone: Don’t rent from Enterprise)

Most interesting to me is this Lusaka Times article that says it was ship ZS-SJD. If they’re right, and they may not be considering they misidentified the 737-800 as a 737-700, then this is the exact plane I flew out of Lusaka back to Johannesburg back in December 2003. Neat.

Looks like a sweet ride, huh?

To your left is what the first 737-700ER will look like in the colors of ANA. They’re going to start flying it on March 25 from Nagoya to Guangzhou (China).

What’s so unique about it? Well on a plane that Southwest fills with 137 seats, they will have only 48. There will 24 business class seats and 24 economy class seats. Even the economy seats will be good though with more than 6″ more legroom than normal (38″).

And while we’re on the subject, let’s talk about the 737-700ER a little more. This plane is going to be a rockstar. According to Boeing it will fly up to 5,510 nm. As you can see on the map below from the beloved Great Circle Mapper, that gets you really far.

This map shows the range from LAX. You could fly to London, Tokyo, or Sao Paulo without problem. Of course, this means you’d have to buy all the auxiliary fuel tanks so it’ll cost a little more, but that kind of range could open up new thin routes that aren’t currently flown today.

LAX to Madrid, anyone?