First Third 2016: JC Wings Reviews

JC Wings is something of an enigma amongst the manufacturers. Tied closely to Gemini and sharing their moulds with them they rather sporadically announce releases and then take ages to actually release the models. Often it seems like they are trying to announce before Phoenix but the actual models don't appear until well after - months in fact. This can make it a challenge to discuss their releases as the majority of the 2016 announcements haven't seen the light of day yet!

Even taking into account the May announcements from the past week JC have been relatively quiet in 1/400 so far this year with only 35 releases (or at least announcements). Interestingly there has been a roughly 50:50 split between the Asian releases we would typically expect and a European fare. That's not to say the variety is anything to write home about with multiple releases for the same airlines.

Having said that there is a sprinkling of unusual and non-standard releases of the sort that I would like to see from Gemini. JC and Gemini have a large catalogue of moulds and JC can whip out some interesting subjects seemingly at whim. They have continued to use the improved Gemini Concorde and also just released a couple of A310s using again the updated Gemini mould proving that the mould traffic ins't entirely one way between the two manufacturers. Neither of the moulds are especially great but they are not appalling either - though it would have been nice for the hoover style engines on the A310 to have been fixed up with a pylon change.

Below are the announced 2016 JC Wings:

Insanely the only models that have been released of all the above are the 2 A310s! This is beyond a joke and there are even models from 2015 that still haven't been released. Just what are JC Wings playing at? What possible reason could they have for being so insanely slow to release?

Still if I am to talk about the announcements then the Qantaslink F100 is a nice surprise and of course we have Adrian Balch to thank for the release of a BEA One-Eleven (as well as the previous Cathay Britannia). Cheers Adrian - much appreciated. Hopefully there'll be some more One-Eleven 500s as it is one of the most under-used moulds in this scale (and it'll appear within a month).

It is good to see that JC Wings is still slipping out the odd unusual Chinese release. Colorful Guizhou is not well known but very welcome and the ERJ-190 mould is again good and under-utilised.

A sizeable number of the announced releases have been A330s and A340s though at present it is uncertain whether the wing angle issues that dogged many of the early releases, which are on otherwise excellent moulds, have been fixed. I'll have to reserve judgement for now - though I am looking to get the previous Cathay A340-300 release.

There is still a substantial amount of overlap between JC Wings and the other manufacturers, which is disappointing, especially as JC Wings tends to announce first and release much later than the competition. The Air Australs, Turkish and Chinese A330s are all Phoenix releases whilst Aeroclassics has made the Eva A321s. There is still some uniqueness in the widebodies though with the PIA and Austrian 777s and WOW A330 showing much potential.

Hopefully the rest of 2016 will see further unusual releases, especially classics, but for now JC Wings has to be the most surprising of the manufacturers in terms of release dates as well as actual releases! It'd be nice if they could be bothered to release their models within at least a month of announcing them!

BigBird Mk3

It is very unclear what is happening with this seeming sub-brand of JC Wings. They vanished off the face of the earth following their first pair of Cathay 747s but resurfaced last week with 3 new models announced - 2 Singapore Big Top 747-300s and an opportunistic Malaysia retro 747-400. It is good to see that they are still about and the first releases were excellent, if expensive. I'm not sure why they are producing such low volumes (120 examples) of what will be very popular models (Panda can make 200 of an obscure 737) but hopefully they'll release more than 3 models in 2016! If they do it seems likely that they'll be further Asian 747 classics - perhaps JAL or Malaysia 747-300s?