Kelowna celebrates second Arch of Triumph win

Crowning glory in Kelowna: Ready with the hammer and nails to fix their second Arch of Triumph certificate to the walls of the station are Darrell Belgrove, Steve Smith and Blair Balehowsky. Missing from photo, but part of the crew, is Cody Anderson. Kelowna is the only airport in Canada to have won this prestigious award before, having first achieved the same accolade back in November 2013.

For the first time in five weeks, since Auckland’s firefighters delivered a 37.1 and secured fourth spot in the process, an airport has broken into the top 10 of the 2016 Arch of Triumph. Cluj-Napoca has added to its victory in the S16 public vote back in March, with a creditable 36.9 and joint sixth position on the leader board. For an airport to gain a slot amongst the best of the best fire truck water arches from this year, it must now muster a score of 8.9 from each anna.aero judge. It was nice to get an African entry this week, only the sixth so far this year, with a contribution from Lanseria in South Africa. However, with a score of just 15.2, it failed to make any sort of impression and came out bottom of the pile this week. With Cluj-Napoca’s victory, Europe stretched its lead in the inter-regional battle, after two weeks without a win, having delivered 15 out of the 28 weekly (54%) winners so far in 2016. Keep Monitoring!!

Atlasglobal Istanbul Atatürk to Cluj-Napoca 1 August

Are the fire crews under instruction from the apron guy…?

Judge’s Comments: Is the ramp operative passing vital instructions through to the two fire crews about the angle of their water jets in this image? If he was, he certainly has to take some credit for this near perfect FTWA – one that was good enough to break into the 2016 top 10. However, as the anna.aero judges dislike any sort of apron clutter in their FTWA images, he also lost the airport some vital points which may have seen Cluj-Napoca climb a little higher on the leader board…

Jonny: 8.2; Marc: 9.5; Paul: 9.3; Ralph: 9.9.

Iberia San Sebastian to London Luton 26 July

We suspect that a garden hose is being used on the right hand side of this FTWA…

Judge’s Comments: Without visual proof of what is on the right hand side of this FTWA ‒ the clue is in the name, Fire TRUCK Water Arch – our judges have to just assume that there is one in action. I mean it could be a man with a garden hose…a leaky water pipe…anything. As a result, the scores have been downgraded quite significantly…

Jonny: 5.5; Marc: 7.7; Paul: 6.5; Ralph: 6.2.

Iberia San Sebastian to London Luton 26 July

Same airline, same aircraft…one hour and fifty minutes later in London…

Judge’s Comments: Although not for the first time, we have received an FTWA for both ends of a new route, this time for Iberia’s new service between San Sebastian and London Luton. However, at the UK end of this route there are at least two tenders on display in the picture. As a result, the FTWA attains a much better result than its Spanish cousin – 8.9 points better to be precise – but unfortunately not quite good enough to take the weekly win…

Jonny: 9.1; Marc: 8.3; Paul: 8.7; Ralph: 8.7.

NewLeaf Hamilton to Saskatoon 27 July

The first of three FTWAs for NewLeaf this week…

Judge’s Comments: After two FTWAs from two regional Canadian airports last week, the new Canadian ULCC has been blessed with three more this week, from three other regional Canadian airports. This means that the new entrant has already received as many water arches as the likes of Air Canada Rouge, Turkish Airlines, Wizz Air and China Eastern Airlines have this year…

Jonny: 7.8; Marc: 6.3; Paul: 7.2; Ralph: 7.6.

NewLeaf Hamilton to Halifax 28 July

NewLeaf Number two…but unfortunately the worst of the trio…

Judge’s Comments: This image reeks of a picture taken through a tinted terminal window. There is that unmistakable blue/green hue to the image. In addition, there is all sorts of apron clutter in Halifax too…including one apron operative getting in some pre-turnaround exercises…he did some squat thrusts after touching his toes ten times apparently…

Jonny: 6.1; Marc: 6.2; Paul: 5.9; Ralph: 5.5.

NewLeaf Kelowna to Regina 28 July

The best of the bunch…or should that be branch…as it’s for NewLeaf…hahahahaha…

Judge’s Comments: Sorry I’m still laughing at my great joke in the caption. It might take me a while to compose myself…deep breaths…right…focussed now. Nope…gone again…best leave this one altogether…abandon commentary…

Jonny: 8.0; Marc: 7.5; Paul: 7.6; Ralph: 7.3.

Norwegian Paris CDG to New York JFK 29 July

Are the fire tenders also remote controlled here in CDG??

Judge’s Comments: I always remember being amazed while I was sitting in Air France’s vast Terminal 2 at CDG during a layover watching a driverless push-back tug being controlled by an apron operative with something akin to a giant remote control that your kids would use with one of their toys…are the fire tenders the same? We’ll never know…as we can’t see them!!

Jonny: 7.2; Marc: 7.4; Paul: 7.3; Ralph: 7.2.

FlySafair Cape Town to Lanseria 1 August

Severe ear-wash FTWA for the FlySafair crew…

Judge’s Comments: Perhaps the fire crews at Lanseria in South Africa had heard that the FlySafair flight crew had had a hot and sticky flight from Cape Town and decided that they needed a freshen up. Well they certainly got that…the Captain and Co-Pilot now have the cleanest ears in Africa after this extreme ear-wash FTWA…

Jonny: 4.0; Marc: 4.1; Paul: 3.8; Ralph: 3.3.