South African Airways | Boeing 747SP-44 | ZS-SPF | NG Models

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INTRODUCTION

As with their Tristars NG has been feeling its way with its 747SP releases and this new SAA example is only the 4th released, half of which have been non-airline releases. This is a stark contrast to their usage of their new Airbus A350-900 mould, which now has 11 releases in the same period. I hope this is just a reflection of the scrutiny that the SP has been getting from collectors and is not a sign of things to come or a sign of difficulties in production. Anyway as with the Iran Air example this model has got a lot of attention prior to release.

I'm not going to write a full detailed review of this model but as I have acquired an early example I thought I'd share some photos of the release for people to look at in detail. NG have stated that there were QC issues with the production run so there will be a second run in the future. Whether any identified faults are remedied in time for that release I can't say.

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For photos of the real thing see here, here and here

​One aspect that has clearly been modified is the height of the windowlines, which was criticised as being too high on the Iran Air release. It is definitely lower here by a small margin and looks better for it.

Criticism so far has mainly been centred on the following:

• Shape of the cockpit mask above the windows
• Size and spacing of the main titles
• Lack of the white forward lower portion of the vertical stabiliser – used by SAA to mask the change in fuselage width
• Lack of a black nosecone dot
• Colour of the IATA logo

Of those 5 points the first one is very minor and the second not an issue as far as I see it. The other three are however issues and if this were a standard review I think this model would probably lose 3 or 4 points in the livery section due to 4 of the 5 bullets above.

Overall the model is up to NG's usual quality in terms of the mould and printing / quality and I suspect a thorough review would yield it a score of something like 24-26 which isn't bad but is low for NG's usual standards. It is a minor modification to add both the nosecone dot and the white area of the tailplane so I suspect NG may do this on the second run of the model. Interestingly the Herpa version of the same model, which is on a much inferior mould, made all the same livery mistakes as NG have made so this is clearly the better option between the two.