Here's The Plane The Eagles Took to Brazil

In June, I put together a Twitter thread about the Phillies taking a BEAST of a plane to London for their series against the Mets. It went semi viral, and the dopamine hit of likes and replies sustained me for about 58 minutes.

And then I got sad and lonely again because social media is a hell of a drug.

Anyway, the Eagles are currently, as I write this, flying 10 hours to play a team two hours away so the NFL can inject its brand of football forcefully into the BRIC countries, with the aim of having as few fans or players as possible murdered or kidnapped in the process.*

Philadelphia Eagles website:

“Consistency is important. Understanding that São Paulo has the fourth-largest population of any city in the world will allow them to prepare for traffic conditions. They will allow for more travel time and the corporate relationship the team has with American Airlines has helped – American is providing the largest airplane in its fleet and that will allow as many players as possible to have access to pods where the players can stretch out and relax on the way to and from Brazil.”

That largest airplane is a 777-300ER— it can basically fly anywhere in the world nonstop.

Nakobe Dean shared this picture of the “Flagship Business” section on the jet. 

Not bad!

Here’s the seating configuration per Seat Guru:

• 8 Flagship First lay-flat seats, presumably for the front office (or maybe a few select vets), 
• 52 Flagship Business, so that should just about cover the active roster 
• And then more than 200 plebe seats for all the support staff

A fancy plane, no doubt. And while it may be newer and more efficient than the older 747 the Phillies flew on, which has a boiler room that crushes and burns actual dinosaur bones to stay aloft, I feel like it lacks some of the wow factor of the super high-end Queen of the Skies from Atlas Air:

The Phillies flew in absolute style to London. ✈️

Manager Rob Thompson said he was excited about the "100-something lay-down seats" on the plane.

Players were instructed to sleep after takeoff.

That probably wasn't hard in this VIP beast from @AtlasAirWW.

Let's dig in: pic.twitter.com/S6phTe96NC

— Kyle Scott Laskowski (@KyleScottL) June 6, 2024

Anyway, fun facts! The Eagles' charter flight number is AA9745— which, along with AA9746, they’ll probably use most of the year.

The Phillies typically take a Delta 757 charter, with flight number DAL8890. 

Now you can get alerts like I do, to make sure they get home safe.

*Would love to see the “Risks” section of The Shield’s board meeting when they formulated this plan. “3.5,” Goodell says to an aid. “So, are we talking 3.5 as the over-under of collateral human damage, or four total people, but one of them is sawed in half?”