Gemini200 1/200 Virgin Atlantic A330-900 Unboxing and Review

I’ll rate this Gemini Virgin A330-900 in 10 categories.
Interestingly, this 2023 model comes with Gemini’s old standard black box design. There’s no void to let you have a glimpse of the model inside. The foam offers very good protection to the model. I’ll give an 8.
This A339 comes with magnetic gear and a display stand. The plane looks beautiful in cruising mode on the stand. All the gear door covers are extremely well made. Most importantly, the nose gear door cover can sit into the slot perfectly. It’s very smooth to insert the landing gear. I’ll give a 9.
At the first glance, this brand new first generation mould looks pretty good. The curves on the nose look very realistic. The distinct curves on the belly look very close to the real thing. Yet, there’s a big fail: the unique A339 sharklets come with a very obvious wrong shape. First, it’s oversized. This is very obvious when you see them from the outside. And from here, you’ll find their angles are far too high as well. I found this very troubling to the serious collectors. So, I’ll only give a 7.
This pair of Rolls Royce Trent 7000 engines look very realistic. The fan blades are in good shape and in good scale. The fan is spinnable. And they have see-through cores. However, it doesn’t come with the exactly correct engine pylons for Trent 7000. The upward curve on the pylon is not deep enough. I’ll give an 8.
The wings are very well attached. But the first 2 batches of this Virgin edition have a very irritating common problem. Many found that one of the horizontal stabilizers is not properly glued or absolutely not glued at all. So, the two stabilizers come in different angles. The two engines are well aligned and have very good ground clearance. I’ll give a 7 for build.
The nose gear leg and joints are clearly well made. The wheel hubs are detailed. But, the main gear legs are interestingly very bulky at the bottom. The main gears can tilt and be kept in a very good-looking landing tilted position. I’ll give an 8.
The major aerials and navigation lights are well made by inserted parts. All the cargo doors are accurately printed. The APU exhaust is very detailed. Yet, it has no inserted gems on the nose gear leg or on the wings. I’ll give a 9.
All the Virgin titles’ and logos’ positions, sizes, and typefaces are correct. It has the carrier’s big title on the belly. And the Virgin logos on the tail and on the inner side of the sharklets are very finely printed. Virgin’s Flying Lady nose art is also very well made. I’ll give livery a 9.
Virgin’s unique pearl colour has been a challenge to all manufacturers. Let’s use Aviationtag’s real Virgin aircraft skin as our colour reference here. It looks that the paint applied here isn’t exactly like the real thing. But Gemini gets scarlet and purple correct. We can also use Planetags’ Virgin skins as reference. See, I believe Gemini has colour discrepancy here. I’ll give an 8.
All Gemini’s A339 first generation products have the same mould issue. The wrong sharklet shape is a major flaw to many collectors. It’s very logical to assume it will have improved releases in the near future. So, this first generation may become obsolete very soon. So, I’ll give a 7 for value.
I’ll give this Virgin A339 a total of 80 points in my ARAIG Index.
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