My fleet of model aircraft
My ‘anti–summer vacation’ was finally over. 😮💨 Besides lecturing at FLOLAC ’24 and hosting my summer interns (with great help from my research assistant Gene Tsai), from June to August I’d been reviewing for APLAS ’24 —including both the main conference and the student research competition & posters track— and POPL ’25. Reviewing for POPL was particularly stressful. Probably due to the stress, which led to a desire for shopping, my passion for aircraft model collecting is somewhat rekindled — I got four new model aircraft during the three months… 🙈
I started collecting model aircraft when I worked in Japan, and (when I was writing the paper on BiGUL logic) my office desk was like
Obviously there wasn’t much space, and I had to keep half of my fleet at home — for example,
Now most of my fleet is based in my office at IIS and can be appreciated by my colleagues and guests. This is the ‘hangar’ in my office:
More interestingly, I can tell (personal) stories about the reasons for getting these particular aircraft, starting from why I became an aviation enthusiast.
‘Happy Flight’
Near the end of my DPhil, I came across Shinobu Yaguchi’s film Happy Flight, which shows the people and work involved in making a flight happen. It’s fascinating to see such a big, composite system work (which constantly reminds me of how much programming language theory —which is supposed to be a theory about abstraction and composition— still hasn’t achieved). The protagonist aircraft was an All Nippon Airways (ANA) 747, and all the shots were obviously taken with love — I felt that I saw the beauty of 747 through the director’s own eyes. ANA was also the airline featured in the classic Japanese TV drama Good Luck!!, which is representative of the golden era of Japanese TV dramas, and made ANA 747s even more iconic. I therefore own three ANA B747-400s (JA8096, 1:200, Blue Box; JA8098, 1:400, Hogan; JA8958, 1:200, Hogan) to be displayed at different locations; in particular, JA8096 was the aircraft filmed in Happy Flight. By the time I started working in Japan, ANA had retired all its 747s and mainly been flying the 787, and I own an ANA B787-8 (JA805A, 1:400, Hogan) representing this 787 era that I experienced myself.
Studying in the UK
The first model aircraft I got was a Cathay Pacific B777-300ER (B-KQJ, 1:200, JC Wings), which my brother-in-law bought me as a gift. I flew with Cathay Pacific for most of my flights between Taiwan and the UK on their 777s, which therefore become special to me, so I got a few more (B-KQE, 1:400, Apollo; B-KQX, 1:400, Phoenix; B-KPM, 1:200, JC Wings). There were several flights a day between Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as between Hong Kong and the UK; moreover, transferring at Hong Kong airport was exceptionally smooth, taking only about an hour, and if a flight to Hong Kong was delayed, a member of the ground staff would meet you at the gate and guide you through expedited security — I never needed to worry about missing a flight. Cathay started to switch to a new livery in 2015, and I’ve never flown in one of their aircraft with the new livery. Among the Cathay 777s I own, only the 1:200 model of B-KPM is painted in the new livery, which sort of symbolises my wish to fly with Cathay to the UK again (and I wanted to collect one of JC Wings’s new 777 moulds with more accurate GE90 engines). But alas, Hong Kong is not a place I dare to visit nowadays.
I own a China Airlines A340-300 (B-18801, 1:400, JC Wings) to remember my first few flights to the UK. These were direct flights, which were apparently not profitable though, and the route was quickly discontinued (but resumed in recent years). For my last flight moving from the UK back to Taiwan, I wanted to try an A380, so I flew on an Emirates A380-800 (A6-EDA, 1:400, Witty Wings). Now that I’m based in Taiwan, I have more opportunities to fly with China Airlines (and maybe Emirates too). The airline’s name is ridiculous, so there’s been a mental barrier for me to collecting its aircraft, but I was very happy with their service on my flight to an IFIP WG 2.1 meeting in Germany this April, and may consider getting one or two types of their aircraft that my fleet still lacks, especially if there are special liveries with Taiwanese elements.
When I studied in the UK, I usually took British Airways flights to travel to conferences. For example, I travelled to Boston for ICFP 2013 on a British Airways B747-400 (G-BNLV, 1:400, Gemini Jets). It was an old aircraft with dated interior design, but it was probably the last time for me to fly in one of the 747s, most of which have been retired worldwide. The conference hotel was a Hilton inside the airport, and if I remember correctly, there was a piano for public playing, and I played Chopin’s barcarolle, which Kenichi Asai heard and responded to with a nocturne. I would guess that this more or less helped me to get nominated as a co-chair of PEPM 2018 later, which was the very first workshop that I organised.
A related exhibit in my office is the USS Enterprise-D (1:1500, Diamond Select) from the legendary Star Trek: The Next Generation series. When I was an undergrad, I watched the entire series to practise English listening and speaking skills (by repeating some of the lines), and picked up part of my accent from Patrick Stewart. Soon I bought the model, which followed me as I did my substitute service and later went to the UK. The model came with a fragile plastic stand, which eventually broke, and my Enterprise-D could no longer fly, just like the Enterprise-D on screen crashed in Star Trek Generations. My Enterprise-D was left in Taiwan when I worked in Japan, but revived recently when I, surprisedly like everyone else, saw the Enterprise-D resurrected on screen in the last season of Star Trek: Picard. In reality, I found on eBay that there are high-quality acrylic replacement stands made specifically for these Enterprise-Ds. So my Enterprise-D now flies on one of these stands on the top of my bookshelf, alongside JA8096 (with an older livery).
Working in Japan
Probably because I wanted to stay with the Oneworld alliance (of which both Cathay Pacific and British Airways are members), my flight for relocating to Japan was operated by a Japan Airlines B767-300ER (JA611J, 1:400, Hogan) (rather than ANA). Japan Airlines quickly becomes my favourite airline for its unusually spacious economy seats (which feel like other airlines’ premium economy seats) and great food, some of which is prepared in cooperation with Japanese restaurants, for example Taishōken’s tsukemen (dipping noodles) and Mos’s burger (which you are given instructions to assemble by yourself).
Thanks to my supervisor Zhenjiang Hu’s generous support, the period I worked in Japan was when I most frequently flew (with Japan Airlines) to attend conferences. For example, to present BiGUL at PEPM 2016, which was co-located with POPL 2016 in Florida, I took a Japan Airlines B787-8 (JA825J, 1:200, Phoenix) to Dallas —where my high-school classmate Ting-Sung Hsieh took the trouble to meet me at the airport briefly and bring me a beef cheesesteak lettucewich by Which Wich— and then on to Tampa. The domestic flights in the US such as the one from Dallas to Tampa were operated by American Airlines (which is also a Oneworld member) using narrow-body aircraft, and I own an American Airlines B737-800 (N971AN, 1:400, Gemini Jets) to represent these flights (which were always crowded and not particularly pleasant however).
Japan Airlines used both the 787 and the 777 for long-haul flights. I own a Japan Airlines B777-300ER (JA732J, 1:200, JFOX) in the standard Oneworld livery, and I happened to fly on this particular aircraft JA732J (which I later discovered to be the first 777-300ER prototype) to Los Angeles for POPL 2018, where I presented my first top-conference paper (on ‘BiGUL logic’, shown in the first photo above) and co-chaired PEPM 2018 with Fritz Henglein (who appointed me to website chair of POPL in 2019, a job which I did for three years and enabled me to connect with more people in the community). It was already a fruitful and memorable trip career-wise, and became even more so when I got the chance to listen to Itzhak Perlman play BWV 1041 at the Walt Disney Hall in the evening after my POPL talk. When Perlman struggled to get from his wheelchair onto the conductor’s podium, the audience hesitated and stopped clapping, and I cannot forget how Perlman gestured everyone to keep clapping for him, and the phrase ‘such humanity’ uttered by someone nearby when the concert was over.
In my last year in Japan, I realised that it would be difficult for me to stay and work more permanently, and started looking for a job elsewhere. In June, Heriot-Watt University invited me to do an interview, which was intended to be online at first, but Katya Komendantskaya kindly made arrangements to extend that to a three-day visit, funded generously by Sven-Bodo Scholz. These arrangements happened when I was co-chairing Bx 2019 (with James Cheney) in Philadelphia. 48 hours after I flew back from Philadelphia, I was on a KLM flight to Edinburgh, still preparing for the interview. The flight was operated by a 777, but I’ve already got too many 777s in my fleet, and chose to get a KLM B787-10 (PH-BKL, 1:400, NG Models) instead (an aircraft type which I didn’t have). The flight from Tokyo Narita to Schiphol was delayed and I didn’t catch the flight to Edinburgh, but luckily my Taiwanese passport allowed me to enter the Schengen area without applying for anything in advance, and I had a nice meal and a good sleep in a hotel while waiting for the next flight. The visit was great; in particular I met and talked to quite a few members of the Dependable Systems Group, and would’ve gladly joined them if I were offered the job, which I didn’t get however.
Returning to Taiwan
I end up working back at Academia Sinica, Taiwan (reuniting with Shin). Covid struck soon after I started the job, and I didn’t get near an aircraft until the lockdown was eased up, allowing my team to fly to Slovenia for ICFP 2022, where I presented ‘native datatype-generic programming’ (which was my first ICFP talk), and for TyDe 2022, where Tzu-Chi Lin presented the associated experiment on ‘native generic syntax’ (which was also the first time for him). This was the first time I assembled a team, worked something out, and travelled to a conference together, using the first grant I got (co-written with Liang-Ting). We flew to Slovenia on a Turkish Airlines 777-300ER (TC-JJJ, 1:400, NG Models), which was also the first time I flew with Turkish Airlines — so it was a lot of first times. More recently, when I flew back from ETAPS 2024 in Luxembourg also on a Turkish Airlines flight, I paid to upgrade to business class myself, which was my first time travelling business class on a long-haul flight. And I totally get why it’s called business class — being able to lie flat and sleep was a completely different experience, and I was much less fatigued (and could get straight to business if needed) when I got off the aircraft. I’ll probably be on more Turkish Airlines flights, because their coverage of European destinations are extensive, and routes through Istanbul are pretty much the shortest ones. We needed to go through security again at Istanbul for our westbound flight to Slovenia however; it was terribly crowded, and at the height of the pandemic all those people meant lots of viruses. Eventually Tzu-Chi got covid two days before our return flight, but luckily I didn’t, probably thanks to the fourth dose of vaccine I got two weeks before the trip and my natural tendency to avoid contact with unfamiliar people.
Trips
I do enjoy trips with familiar people, a number of which involve flights. For example, in 2016 I took a Japan Airlines B787-9 (JA861J, 1:400, Phoenix) to Boston for the Christmas holidays with my high-school classmates Ching-Hao Wang and Wei-Jin Zheng, then studying in Boston and Austin respectively. We rendezvoused at Boston airport and took a JetBlue Airways A320 (N805JB, 1:200, Gemini Jets) to Washington DC (spending quite some time in the museums), then a train to New York, from which we took another JetBlue flight back to Boston. These were the only JetBlue flights I’ve taken; I had very good impressions of the airline, and more importantly, the airline has been strongly associated with this memorable (and probably unrepeatable) trip to me. Notably, a souvenir I got from this trip was a British Airways A380-800 (G-LEB, 1:200, Gemini Jets); I’ve never flown on one though — I simply wanted a 1:200 model of the A380. 😏
In Japan, I travelled with my lab mates quite frequently, either to research meetings or for leisure trips. The Shinkansen sufficed for closer places such as Karuizawa, where we went quite a few times and retreated to NII’s exquisite seminar house in the woods. For farther places, domestic flights are an option too; in Japan, these are operated by both narrow- and wide-body aircraft, with the latter being in a high-density configuration. I own a Japan Airlines B737-800 (JA321J, 1:400, JC Wings) and a Japan Airlines B777-200 (JA711J, 1:400, Phoenix) to represent these flights. Two lab mates to whom I was particularly close were Zirun Zhu and Zhixuan Yang, who were PhD students at the lab. Zirun got his degree and went back to China soon after I left Japan, while Zhixuan left for the industry but restarted his PhD studies at Imperial College London. Happily, after the pandemic somewhat subsided, we were able to reassemble in Tokyo in spring this year, revisiting several places and restaurants where we often went. I took the opportunity to try the newly established Starlux Airlines: my flight to Tokyo was on a Starlux Airlines A321neo (B-58201, 1:400, JC Wings), and the return flight on a Starlux Airlines A350-900 (B-58501, 1:400, Aviation400). Similarly to JetBlue, these have been my only flights with Starlux, and currently Starlux is strongly associated with this special trip to me.
Friends
There are also aircraft which I personally have never been on, but my friends have. My Oxford housemates Yen-Chen Pan and Eric Liang usually took the flight operated by an EVA Air B777-300ER (B-16716, 1:400, Apollo) between Taiwan and the UK (stopping over Bangkok); moreover, when my DPhil supervisor Jeremy Gibbons came to give special lectures at FLOLAC 2014, he took the same flight too. Wei-Jin took a Southwest Airlines B737-800 (N8642E, 1:200, Gemini Jets) to Boston for our Christmas trip in 2016. When my friends in the US flew back to Taiwan, they usually chose one of the Japanese airlines for the transpacific leg, and ANA seemed to be the more popular choice — so I own an All Nippon Airways B777-300ER (JA784A, 1:400, Hogan). At NII we got intern students regularly. Most of them were from China, usually coming from Shanghai on a China Eastern Airlines A330-300 (B-5976, 1:400, Phoenix); there were also several from Portugal, and some of them had the rare opportunity to take a Lufthansa B747-8 (D-ABYP, 1:400, Phoenix).
Two more aircraft were gifts from my lab mates in Japan: an Air France Concorde (F-BVFF, 1:200, Gemini Jets) from Zhixuan Yang, with whom I still maintain regular contact, and a Xiamen Airlines B787-8 (B-2763, 1:150) from Tao Zan, who was a senior PhD student when I arrived in Japan, and whom I had a great time working with.
Beautiful aircraft
I prefer to collect aircraft that are meaningful to me in some way. However, there are aircraft which I don’t have much chance to get close to, but are still worth collecting. I bought a British Airways A319 (G-EUPB, 1:400, Gemini Jets) to have a member of the A320 family in my 1:400 fleet (to recreate the scene with an A380 looking like the mother of an A320). I also have a Boeing B747-8 (N6067E, 1:200, JC Wings) because the 747 is so iconic and the -8 update makes it even more beautiful, even though few airlines want the 747 any more (so I chose the Boeing house livery). Finally, to relieve the stress of POPL reviewing, two of the aircraft I got were an Airbus BelugaXL A330-700L (F-GXLO, 1:400, JC Wings) and an All Nippon Airways A380-800 (JA381A, 1:400, Aviation400). I don’t think I have the chance to get close to a BelugaXL, but it’s such a special aircraft with a well designed and cute livery. Similarly, ANA flies their A380s only between Tokyo Narita and Honolulu, which I probably won’t have a chance to get on, but the sea turtle livery is so well thought out and cute too.
