An Irish airline has named one of its passenger jets after Olympic silver medalist Annalise Murphy.
Ms Murphy unveiled her own name on the nose of an ASL Airlines Ireland (formerly Air Contractors) Boeing 737 yesterday. Murphy’s father Con is the airline’s Chief Pilot.
The unique event sees the Ireland rowing hero become the only modern day person to have an aircraft named after her by any Irish airline. Aer Lingus names it’s aircraft after Irish saints.
The aircraft, a Boeing 737-31S with the registration EI-STA, will now be known as the ‘Annalise Murphy’ and will sail though the skies bringing holidaymakers all over Europe from Dublin, Shannon, Cork and Knock airports.
Captain Murphy flies ASL Ireland’s Boeing 757’s on transatlantic services on behalf of Aer Lingus. He and the Murphy family were on hand to help Annalise name the 145 seater jet the ‘Annalise Murphy’ in honour of the 26-year olds superb achievements for Irish sailing over two Olympics.
An airline spokesperson said: “It is no surprise where Annalise got her love of sailing as both her Mum and Dad are enthusiastic sailors. Her Dad, Capt. Con Murphy, was an Olympic Sailing Technical Official at the Rio Olympics and is a former Olympic sailing coach and holder of the Round Ireland Sailing Record. Her Mum Cathy competed in the Seoul Olympics in 1988.”
ASL Airlines Ireland is one of 9 global airlines in the Dublin based ASL Aviation Group.
The Irish airlines operates passenger flights under its own brand and for Aer Lingus as well as cargo services for express freight customers FedEx and DHL.
The Group operates a total of 130 passenger and cargo aircraft on 6 continents including 6 European airlines.
Earlier this year, the group acquired the airline operations of TNT Express N.V. (hereafter TNT Express), comprising TNT Airways (Belgium) and Pan Air Líneas Aéreas (Spain).
The two airlines were renamed ASL Airlines Belgium and ASL Airlines Spain respectively.