>>As StarkWire One, it bears the US N-number "N620BH" for
>>sentimental reasons,¹ but its
>>original registration number was N4522V.
>
> I see what you did there

I was amazed to discover, some years ago, that a person can in fact do that, even if that person does not in fact own an airplane. The "reserved date" you see on that record says last year because I inadvertently let it run out a couple of years ago, but fortunately when I realized my mistake and went to correct it, nobody else had grabbed it in the meantime. N-number squatters - they're like domain squatters, only... well, a lot less common, I should expect. :)

>Surprised they never became popular with the Japanese.

Ironically, they were almost exactly the opposite of what the Japanese market needs. Because of their whopping regional traffic, Japanese airlines mostly want huge-ass airplanes that don't have to fly very far; the 747SP was a smaller-than-normal 747 that can fly really far. Boeing actually developed a different 747 small-batch variant, the 747SR, which was specially designed to carry more people than the normal kind but not as far, and withstand more cycles in its lifetime. (Nowadays, they use 777s and ram in 500 or so pleb-class seats. Airbus might actually be able to sell some A380s to JAL if they made a version that could only go a thousand miles, but had 5,000 of those unimplemented "why don't we just make them stand up?" racks some evil genius at Airbus designed. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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