1/400 JCwings KLM B747-400 PH-BFG, the queen in blue!

JCwings and a modern KLM release? Yes, it's possible! For this model JCwings collaborated with Aviationtag and gave us the Boeing 747-400 PH-BFG wearing the 2003 livery with '100 years' sticker on the fuselage. There is a flaps-up and flaps-down version, in this review I take a look at the flaps-up variant. The tag it comes with has a nice JCwings stamp on it, making it a little more special than others.

As usual there are 6 parts that will be given between 1 and 10 points, 1 being the lowest and 10 being perfect. In the end the average of these scores will be the final score.

Accuracy of colors

First the main colors of the livery. In the past years we have seen quite a few KLM releases by Phoenix, GeminiJets and Aeroclassics, but often they each use a different tone of blue. This makes sense when the color is never exactly the same on pictures due to different lighting conditions, but for this model it should be easy for JCwings, because with each model comes a piece of the actual aircraft. Did they get it right? Well, take a look yourself:

The color on the model is just slightly too light, but it's not nearly as far off like we have seen with GeminiJets and Phoenix a few times. The dark blue cheatline and white colors are good.

Score: 9,5 / 10

Livery

The KLM livery is very simple. It has a light blue top and white belly, seperated by a dark blue cheatline.

Source: Shawn from Airdrie, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The dark blue cheatline is below the windows and just a touch below the middle of the nose.

The cheatline sits a little too low, as there is a little too much space between the windows and the cheatline. Apart from that there is nothing to comment on.

Score: 9,5 / 10

Logos, titles and stickers

Let's start with the KLM logos. The one on the front of the fuselage is done pretty much perfectly. On both sides it aligns with the windows above and below and the font is spot on. The big light blue logo on the tail is also at the perfect height, relative to the upper and lower rudder.

Source: shamu28, https://flic.kr/p/2ikRUEj

There are logos on all four engines and the wingtips, and again I can't see anything wrong with them. The '100 years' sticker, which the real aircraft wore while being scrapped, aligns perfectly with the windows around it, as can be seen here.

The 'The Flying Dutchman' titles underneath the KLM logo at the front is also placed correctly relative to the KLM logo and windows. KLM named their 747-400's to longhaul destinations, where the final letter of the registration corresponds with the first letter of the city (except a few, I guess there was no city that started with the corresponding letter). This aircraft is registred PH-BFG, thus the titles for 'City of Guayaquil' / 'Guayaquil'. And finally there is a mistake! While the Dutch side of 'Guayaquil' is placed correctly, the English title is placed one window too far forwards. Oh well, it can't be 100% perfect right?

The Skyteam logos are nicely done. The AF-KLM logo is missing a space between 'Air' and 'France', but it's only really noticable on close-up pictures.

Score: 9 / 10

Other details

Here we look at other details all around the model. Starting with the cockpit windows. This is often a weakness of JCwings models, but luckily there isn't anything horribly wrong with this one. I think it's a little too tall and that the bottom should be raised slightly. It's important to get this right because even a tiny error can make the entire model look off, and thus I will weigh this quite heavily in my scoring. The cargo doors, both at the front and rear, have plenty of details and are correctly sized.

The doors, raingutters, registration, Dutch and EU flags are all placed correctly. Same goes for the nosecone and various other details.

Score: 9 / 10

Paint and printing QC

So far the model scored almost perfect, but does the quality control keep up the scoring? The printing is crisp and issues can only be found with a magnifying glass. The paint on each of the engines is not amazing, but not terrible.

Score: 9,5 / 10

Mould QC and assembly

The final part is about the QC of the mould. Let's start with the gears because this is a another weakness for many JCwings models. This KLM 747 is no exception unfortunately. The nosegear is pointing forward a little and looks messed up inbetween the geardoors.

The main landing gears are not assembled so well either. Yes they all roll, but the wheels are too far apart. Sometimes you can push them together, but after a few attempts I did not see any improvement. Both middle gears are crooked and the geardoors for the two outer gears are not symmetrical. One has some paint nearly falling off aswell.

There is also some weird thing at the bottom of the vertical stabilizer. I have been trying to remove it, but it seems pretty stuck.

Finally there is too much space between engine #2 and #3 and their pylons. I don't know if this is a thing for all JCwings 747-400's or for this specific model alone, but the engine definitely sits too low too the ground.

At least the wings and stabilizers are fitted well, which you may expect for a new mould as this 747-400.

Score: 7 / 10

Conclusion

This model looks beautiful and clearly they paid a lot of attention to detail. Unfortunately it suffers from the typical JC issues: the cockpit windows are a little off and it has very poor gears and geardoors. I will take this opportunity to rant a little about JCwings. The issues mentioned above happen so often that I never buy new models from them, except if it's something really high on my wishlist. The recent KLM ATR-42 could have been on my display right now, but thanks to the geardoors and cockpit windows it's not. The KLM ATR-72 they showed on Instagram is even worse, did someone even look up pictures of the real thing? Such a shame that JC doesn't seem to care about fixing these issues, because their releases often have some nice surprises. The total score is 53,5 / 6 = 8,9, which is a great score, but it easily could have been higher.