Woah, that tail fin piece is crazy looking, and I want it.

"Boeing"? More like BORING 727

I didn't realise those wing pieces (what I think of as "Flying Time Vessel" wing pieces) went back to the pre-minifig era. Less sure about the tail wing piece, but that reminds me of what was in use in the 90s too--I just didn't have any of the appropriate aircraft to burn it into my memory.

"Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away..."

I’ve known about the horizontal stabilizer for years, and why it had the slot in the leading edge. I think this is the first time I’ve seen the part it was designed to pair with.

Lufthansa! That thing flew like a bunch of bricks.

Overheard a family at a US airport last week saying that they'd never heard of Lufthansa before - air traveller snobbery fully triggered.

@Harmonious_Building:
In the US, you can travel the geographic equivalent of Western Europe (WWII-era definition), and there are domestic airlines and international airlines. Domestic airlines are generally the only ones that will fly you from one US airport to another US airport. International airlines like Lufthansa mostly just take you from coastal hubs to their home nations. If you never travel to their home nations, it’s entirely possible that you’ve never seen any specific foreign airline. Even if you are a frequent flyer, many of these airlines only fly out of one or two airports, and some of those airports (like JFK in NYC) are ones that savvy travelers know to avoid (congestion, higher ticket price, long security lines, etc.).

@PurpleDave said:
"If you never travel to their home nations, it’s entirely possible that you’ve never seen any specific foreign airline."

There's a thing called general knowledge.... (sadly often lacking in the U.S and to be fair Australia to an extent)
I know lots of airlines even if I haven't been to that country or flown on that airline like KLM, Aer Lingus, British Airways, Air France, Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa, Swiss Air, Southwest Airways, Scandinavian Air Service, Air New Zealand, Cathay Pacific, Solomon Islands Air, as well as many airlines that no longer exist like B.O.A.C, Imperial Airways, Trans Australia Airlines, Ansett. (all the modern Australian airlines I obviously know and won't bother listing here).

I'm very surprised people hadn't heard of Lufthansa. It's very famous and has been around for decades.

I was going to mention about this set that I'd really love to see a minifig scale version of that tail piece for tri jet aircraft. That would make for a great and very unique City airport set.

See I’ve never really cared about planes all that much so that piece on the tail will always be a whale fin to me thanks to 6559

@Brickchap said:
" @PurpleDave said:
"If you never travel to their home nations, it’s entirely possible that you’ve never seen any specific foreign airline."

There's a thing called general knowledge.... (sadly often lacking in the U.S and to be fair Australia to an extent)
I know lots of airlines even if I haven't been to that country or flown on that airline like KLM, Aer Lingus, British Airways, Air France, Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa, Swiss Air, Southwest Airways, Scandinavian Air Service, Air New Zealand, Cathay Pacific, Solomon Islands Air, as well as many airlines that no longer exist like B.O.A.C, Imperial Airways, Trans Australia Airlines, Ansett. (all the modern Australian airlines I obviously know and won't bother listing here).

I'm very surprised people hadn't heard of Lufthansa. It's very famous and has been around for decades.

I was going to mention about this set that I'd really love to see a minifig scale version of that tail piece for tri jet aircraft. That would make for a great and very unique City airport set."

Literally my first time hearing about Solomon Islands Air

Interesting discrepancy on the piece count. The article and set page state 26 pieces, but the linked inventory shows 45 (BrickLink says 39). I wonder why that is? Is the query only counting parts that are in the Brickset database?

@PurpleDave said:
"International airlines like Lufthansa mostly just take you from coastal hubs to their home nations. If you never travel to their home nations, it’s entirely possible that you’ve never seen any specific foreign airline. Even if you are a frequent flyer, many of these airlines only fly out of one or two airports, and some of those airports (like JFK in NYC) are ones that savvy travelers know to avoid (congestion, higher ticket price, long security lines, etc.)."

Lufthansa flies to about 20 different cities in the U.S. alone, not just to the largest coastal cities and is one of the world’s biggest airlines. So therefor in my opinion it belongs in the realm of general knowledge.

As for the 1560 Boeing 727, it looks really cool and instantly recognizable. Something that cannot be said about some of the latest airplane sets released in previous years, like 76947 or 60262, to name a few.

This set is a good counter to the "Back in mah day, Lego didn't have specialised parts, it was all basic bricks and plates!" people you still get sometimes, what with the Boeing 727-specific piece for the fin and central engine.

Anyway, it's quite a good little model of a neat plane. That rear stair is also handy for mysterious hijackers making a getaway, or for the CIA to make covert air drops.

@pvp3020 : I believe that is the reason Brickset's count is off, yes. It only considers parts it knows about, even in inventories like this one that don't actually link to its part database. If you count up the parts actually displayed on the inventory tab, it comes up to the same 45 as Rebrickable.
Rebrickable and Bricklink are both correct in their own ways, it's just that RB lists the wheels, tires, and wheel holders separately, while BL lists them as assembled units.

As my dad flew the 727 back in the day, I remember trying to make a representation of the tail fin with integrated engine using parts from 565 and 113. It didn't look quite as good as this one!

@Brickchap said:
" @PurpleDave said:
"If you never travel to their home nations, it’s entirely possible that you’ve never seen any specific foreign airline."

There's a thing called general knowledge.... (sadly often lacking in the U.S...) "
I have been to many countries in the world, including several times to the US.
I have found that, as everywhere, "general knowledge" seems to be related to level of education. But one thing that was different in the US from any other country I had ever visited was the narrow-mindedness of the media, which appeared to be focused almost entirely on the US. I vividly remember shaking my head at the newspapers and news shows on TV, where international news were notably absent or only to be found in tiny portions and, in the case of the newspapers, probably after x or so pages of local sports news and miscellaneous.
Over here as well as in all other countries I know from personal experience, that would be unthinkable.
So yeah, unless you show a certain amount of interest, you can live in your own bubble in the US and not get to know anything about the outside world.
Or, as a former POTUS so eloquently put it, "Belgium is a beautiful city".
;-P

Somehow, my parents have some parts from a similar plane, with a red stripe along the windows, and a white tail fin. I guess that must have been the JAL version. Not even sure if it's complete though...

@WizardOfOss said:
"Somehow, my parents have some parts from a similar plane, with a red stripe along the windows, and a white tail fin. I guess that must have been the JAL version. Not even sure if it's complete though..."

Netherlands had a Martinair set as well 1611-2: Aeroplane

@AustinPowers :
Oh, sure, it's only Americans who live in a bubble and don't know anything about the "outside world".
Ridiculous.

@560heliport said:
" @AustinPowers :
Oh, sure, it's only Americans who live in a bubble and don't know anything about the "outside world".
Ridiculous."
First of all, I didn't say it was all Americans, and secondly I didn't say it was only Americans.
But it was shocking compared to every other country I have ever visited, to see how self-centered the media in the US apparently were, and how many people I met there were quite content to not learn/get to know anything outside of their local community.

Again, I am not saying that everyone in the US is like that, but compared to other countries, the difference in the mindset of many people was indeed very noticeable.

I really wish Lego still made licensed airlines and actual planes. That 727 tail fin looks amazing.

@PurpleDave said:
"I’ve known about the horizontal stabilizer for years, and why it had the slot in the leading edge. I think this is the first time I’ve seen the part it was designed to pair with."

You've never seen the more recent sets like 6368? Same horizontal part, different tail.

@VintageDude said:
"Not a fan of flying, but I do like airplanes."
Me too.... unfortunately I had to go to the dark side to get my absolute brick built essential, a Mosquito. (My Dad's 'company car').

@VintageDude said:
"Not a fan of flying, but I do like airplanes. I own:
320-2, 328-2, 346-1,
371-3, 455-1, 609-1,
613-1, 657-1, 660-1,
661-1, 687-1, 698-1,
1550-1, 1552-2 and 1562-3"

I like to fly, I'm a pilot (private) and I love plane! (of those I only got 371, 455 and 613) Lego is doing all sorts of cars every year (Creator Expert / Icons now I guess). It would be so nice if they could do a very detailed plane/aircraft every year as well (I understand that planes usually take more space than a car (on a shelf) but still, it would be nice).

@VintageDude said:
" @Formendacil said:
"I didn't realise those wing pieces (what I think of as "Flying Time Vessel" wing pieces) went back to the pre-minifig era. Less sure about the tail wing piece, but that reminds me of what was in use in the 90s too--I just didn't have any of the appropriate aircraft to burn it into my memory."

"pre-minifig era"?
The minifigs came in 1975 in sets like 362-1 to mention one set.
Oh, you mean minifigs with eyes, mouths and moving arms and legs?"
The figures with arms fused to their torsos, single piece legs and no face printing - so-called ‘slabbies’ - are not officially minifigures. They’re figures, but not minifigures. Maxifigs also pre-dated minifigures but endured into the early minifigure age.

@PurpleDave, Having lived in Europe, the US and the Far East, and having travelled extensively (though not as much as I would have liked), I have to agree with @AustinPowers: Americans are exceptionally parochial.
It’s not just a function of country size by area. Australia is roughly 80% of the land area of the US, but you don’t get the same level of inward looking there as you do in the US. Nor is it a matter of population. Japan has half the population of the US, but still large, and people there are more knowledgeable about the outside world than Americans despite greater language barriers (there are lots of English-speaking countries but no other Japanese-speaking ones). American parochialism seems to be a result of the culture including the media and the education system.

@PurpleDave No information is 'useless', especially well known airlines.

In your response to me and AustinPowers, you do raise some fair points. Unfortunately for you there's a country very similar to America called Australia and I live there. We also have problems of lack of access to education in rural areas, a large landmass and you can drive for hours and hours before you get to a village, let alone a decent sized town. Despite this, and has been raised by other people here, Australians are no where near as ignorant as many Americans are.

You are correct about knowledge often being tied to the opportunities one has had, however that does not guarantee, nor support, ignorance which is common in America. Perhaps you've seen the videos of people showing a map of the world in a busy street in the US and asking people to correctly name and point to one country (any country) on the map. The answers are astounding. The thing that really shocked me was actually the amount of people who couldn't even correctly point to the USA, or Canada. (apparently Australia is the entire African continent...).

I have read Guns, Germs and Steel and have a lot of respect for Jared Diamond both for his writing style and his observations. However I do find you're comparison between New Zealand highlanders (or New Guineans from whom the idea of 'cargo' comes from) not knowing much about the outside world to Americans living in cities in supposedly the world's most powerful nation, as well as rural areas, being ignorant, rather offensive actually. America is still a first world country with a lot of opportunities to gain knowledge, and more importantly an appreciation and respect for what's beyond you're city block or farm.

My grandfather ran a farm all on his own from age 12. He handmilked and never had a tractor, preferring his draught horse instead. For many years the family did things almost pioneer style even though it was the 1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s. Despite this, he loved current affairs and world news. He would read the papers, listen to the wireless and in later years watch the news on the telly. Even from a very young age he would collect newspaper articles, magazines and so forth and put them in a scrapbook using homemade glue. He never went beyond his town, although the family would love to listen to relatives from Sydney, some who had been around Australia, and people who had travelled overseas. In short, he actively strived to gain knowledge. He didn't just sit around on his farm saying well this is the entire world and everyone else is wrong, like Americans do.

Also consider the film The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, about a young boy in Africa who sneaks into school (his family can't afford the fees) and reads an old book about wind power (ironically in America), then goes and makes a windmill out of an old pump and his father's bicycle to pump water and irrigate his family's crops.

Jared Diamond actually alluded to this in his book Upheaval. Americans are profoundly ignorant of the world outside America, and he raises concerns about the fact that even the many good and informed Americans still think the American way is the best and only way. They refuse to learn from other countries to fix the countless problems America has, because America is apparently 'special' and the leader of the democratic world (Greece, France, Great Britain to name some of the early pioneers of democracy, as well as the Scandinavian countries and us Aussies and Kiwis apparently don't exist).
There's an Aussie saying about some people "having no brains and being happy without them". That right there is America's problem. Americans don't want to gain more knowledge, learn another language or even engage with the outside world. (it wasn't until your bath toys got bombed by the Japanese that America finally abandoned its policy of isolationism).