Mesa Gateway airport in Arizona does get some airline visitors. Allegiant was bringing some jets in while we were visiting early last year. GlobalX also had some coming in. Judging by how many of their jets I saw off to one side not looking too active, I assume they undertake some maintenance work there too. Not a ton of variety with these two but here are some shots of their planes. Makes a change to not show a GlobalX jet at Boeing Field!
The light at sunset can make for some of the most pleasing shots and I did used to take the time to go to Burien when SEA was on a northerly flow to get some of the heavies departing in the best light. Once the sun goes down, it is tempting to head home but I would hang around a bit longer. The blue hour could make for some pleasing shots too and even when it was getting pretty dark, the amazing low light performance of a modern camera meant you could get something different. Combine that with the super noise reduction capabilities of current processing software and you can achieve shots that would have been impossible a few years ago.
I have an old post from SFO on a similar theme to this one, but I make the rules on this blog and this post isn’t violating any of them. (If you want to know what the rules are, let me know and I shall try and come up with some.) When I jet descends from altitude, the fuel the remains in the wing tanks will be very cold. The warmer and moister air lower down can result in the formation of ice on the underside of the wings where the remaining fuel is pooled. This Delta A330 shows that, as expected, there is fuel at the inboard end of the wings but also, less expected by me at least, there is a tank further outboard that still has fuel in it. I like the fact that fuel is kept further out since it alleviates bending loads. You can see the shape of the access panels where the ice is forming.
The shot I always think about wanting to get is looking straight down on a plane in flight. Long ago, I discussed doing this with the WHF team at Waukegan, but we never made it work out. The next best version is the shot from beneath straight up. This is not so good because the fuselage shape is disrupted by the wing and a blank sky is never as interesting as the ground beneath. However, I do still like to shoot this sometimes. In this case, it was a Condor A330neo coming into SEA. This one is in the sand colours that they have. Probably not the contrast I would have liked but so be it.
I recently took an EasyJet flight from Glasgow to Southampton at the end of a work trip. I boarded from the front of the plane and, as we lined up on the steps, I found myself staring into the inlet of the CFM56 engine on this A320. The blade designs on this older generation of engine are not as complex as the newer LEAP engines but they are still interesting to me. The fan blades still have snubbers on this design and the textures of the metals and the inlet look cool.
China Airlines has a livery which is fine but not terribly exciting. When they started taking delivery of their Airbus A350s, they had one delivered in a special scheme that had a blue carbon fibre style of design, similar to that which Airbus has painted on one of the development aircraft. This plane had been elusive to me. I had wanted to photograph it for a long time.
My frustration mounted further when I had been in LA for work. I was walking from the hotel to the airport to return home when I looked to my right and saw the jet on short final just a little way north of me. I had my camera with me (in the bag!) and, if I had paid attention, I could easily have got a shot. Instead, I was caught off guard and missed the opportunity.
All of this led to me being really pleased when I was waiting in Heathrow’s Terminal 5 for a flight for work and I saw the plane was on approach. Shooting through windows is never ideal but I wasn’t going to miss the chance this time. The light was nice, and the plane was easy to catch so I finally managed to get a few shots of this cool looking jet.
Okay, maybe it should be Cecilia, and you aren’t really breaking my heart, but I just liked the thought of the song. I had never heard of the airline called Amelia. It is a small French airline that does a bunch of charter and government work as well as operating some wet lease services. They had an A320 parked up on a gate a couple down from my departing flight from Lyon. I know someone whose daughter is called Amelia, and he is quite partial to aircraft. Surely, he didn’t name her after an airline? At least he didn’t name her EasyJet!
The history of Emirates and the A350 is one that probably doesn’t make anyone in either Emirates or Airbus happy. They were an early customer for the type but, when Airbus decided to go for a larger engine for the A350-1000, Emirates was really unhappy and cancelled its orders. It was a long time before they decided that the A350-900 should indeed be part of the fleet.
There is still a debate going on about whether they will take the A350-1000 based on engine durability issues in Middle East conditions so who knows what will come. Anyway, all of that is a long-winded way of getting to the fact that the first of their jets have now been delivered. I went to Lyon for a quick work trip and didn’t know that Emirates was using its new jets there.
As we landed, I saw one holding for departure and got some shots through the window of the plane I was on as it departed. A couple of days later, I was departing, and the inbound Emirates had just landed. It was taxiing in as we took off. Some sort of symmetry there. No doubt I’ll see loads of them over time.
My plans for a Saturday had changed as a result of something outside our control and I was free in the afternoon. With nothing I needed to do, I was tempted to make a trip to Heathrow to get some shots at Myrtle Avenue. I thought my sister might be tempted to check this out too and that proved to be the case. She was persuaded to tag along and so we headed off aiming to be there just before 3pm for the runway switch over. I wasn’t intending to be there for too long – dinner was definitely a necessity! However, there would be plenty of time to get a few different types arriving.
The wind was strong but there was quite an overcast so not perfect conditions for photos but it still offered opportunities. 3pm came and the switch happened. We were not the only ones with the idea and there were plenty of people on the grass when the first jet showed up. It was almost as much fun watching the people that were there as it was the planes. Some families had come out as had photographers and spotters. The ice cream van showed up a few times while we were there so clearly, he was doing a good business.
I did move around a bit to see the different angles. It is a short walk along the A30 to be right on the centreline amongst the approach lights. Having the planes come directly overhead gives some interesting shot possibilities. The overcast conditions were not making this easy and the shadows were dark and the clouds, while not as bright as a clear sky, do actually have way more light than the undersides. Still, it allows some playing around.
There were a few interesting types coming near the time we needed to go. I packed up the stuff but, as we walked back up Myrtle Avenue to the car, we did wait around to catch some different shots. Looking back down the street as the planes appear over the rooftops gives exactly the sort of context that is lacking when just shooting from the grass. I doubt I will go there many times, but it was a fun way to kill a couple of hours.
Another one from the archive. National Airlines has made a few appearances in this blog over the years. I do find their livery very cool and a welcome change from the norm on airlines. They had one of their A330s in Boeing Field on, I believe, a troop transport flight. I don’t know that for certain and don’t know why it wasn’t at McChord but I’m not complaining.
The light was better on the aircraft when they were loading it up on the Modern ramp. Unfortunately, departures were towards the north which meant the only option for a takeoff shot was going to be over by the terminal building and that would mean quite strong backlighting. Nevertheless, I figured it would be worth a try. You can get quite a good angle from that location on a rotating aircraft provided that it uses a reasonable amount of the runway.
However, there are two downsides to the images that you get. First, the aforementioned backlighting is not going to make for an easy job processing the image. The latest masking tools in Lightroom do give you more flexibility with what you do but there is only so much you can do before things look really funky. The second issue is that the Boeing ramp is going to be in the background which makes for a very cluttered view. In hindsight, I should have tried going with a very low shutter speed to try and blur as much of that distracting material as possible. Guess I won’t be trying that out for a while!