Boeing 767-300ER | 2007

Airline - Global Airlines
Aircraft - Boeing 767-300ER | N992GL
Delivered to Global Airlines, 1995
Stored at Victorville, 2016
Sold to West Cargo, 2016
Converted to 767-300ERF, 2016
Livery - Standard 2007
Country - United States of America

As part of the rebranding in 2007 Global Airlines revamped both its hard and soft product, and correspondingly new seats were installed on all long-haul aircraft. With the retirement of the last few MD-11s in 2007, the widebody fleet included 31 767-200ERs, 102 767-300ERs, 33 747-400s, and 57 777-200ERs. The first to these aircraft to be retrofitted with a new interior was a 767-300ER, registered N992GL, which received 50 GlobalBusiness seats in a 2-2-2 configuration, each with the ability to transform into a fully flat horizontal bed, and 173 Economy seats. In-seat AVOD entertainment screens were present in all classes. While the new GlobalBusiness hard product wasn't the first fully-flat Business Class offered by a US-based carrier (losing out to Republic Airways by two years), Global Airlines did become the first airline in the US to offer exclusively fully-flat Business Class on long-haul flights beginning in early 2009, when all long-haul aircraft had been retrofitted with the new hard product and the 767-200 was retired from transatlantic service.

Partly because of the economic crisis at the time, and partly because of a change in attitude towards First Class in general, 2007 marked the beginning of a new service philosophy at Global Airlines. Instead of having First Class (or GlobalFirst as it was known at the airline) on almost all widebody aircraft, it was now made more exclusive. For example, only a few 767-300ERs were fitted with the new First (as you can see above, N992GL wasn't one of them), and those few were used only on routes with high premium demand, such as London Heathrow. The majority of 767-300s were fitted with either the 50J configuration with 50 GlobalBusiness and 179 Economy seats (as seen above), or the 30J config, with only 30 GlobalBusiness seats and a whopping 230 Economy seats. The latter, less premium-heavy version was used interchangeably with the 50J-configured 767s on international routes depending on demand, and also for flights to Hawaii after the 767-200ER was retired.