Tag Archives: airliner

Not Sure the Laminar Flow is Surviving

If you look at the most recent Boeing aircraft, they have adopted a far deeper inlet lip design. I don’t know whether it is connected but they have been doing work on having laminar flow around the engine cowlings. When the 787 first came along, airlines were not allowed to have them painted anything other than white. That has since been relaxed but there was a performance benefit to the design that was needed to meet promised goals. Consequently, I imagine that this area is quite sensitive to disturbance. That makes this Qantas 787-9 stand out to me. There was a load of patching on the inlet when I saw it taking off from Heathrow heading to Perth. That is a very long flight and tests the performance of the Dreamliner in its nominal configuration. I guess the impact can’t be that bad.

Well, They Didn’t Survive

Leave a Reply

I wasn’t terribly shocked when I recently heard that New Pacific ceased trading. The model seemed a bit suspect when it was first announced and they rapidly transitioned to charter work and away from schedule flying. I still liked seeing their 757s when they showed up in Seattle but I never thought they would survive long. Sadly, that proved to be the case. Here are some other shots of their operations which we won’t see again.

Another A350 Operator for Me

Leave a Reply

Regular visitors to the blog will know I find the A350 to be the best-looking airliner in production at the moment. During a visit to Heathrow, I got my first look at one of the more recent operators. Air India started taking delivery of jets last year. They have done the decent thing and put a colourful livery on their planes as opposed to the usual mostly white. I am grateful for this as well as for the good light I had when it came in.

More Retro American Airlines Liveries

Leave a Reply

The arrival of the American Airlines retro 777 at Heathrow got me thinking about other liveries that American Airlines has included on its planes. As a result of mergers, there are a lot of legacy airlines that have been engulfed by American over the years. They do reflect this by painting planes in liveries of the older operators. Some of these will probably have shown up on the blog over the years but here is a compilation of different paint jobs on American (and predecessor) planes including variations on their own livery.

The Etihad Livery is a Standout

Leave a Reply

I posted a bunch of shots from Heathrow in an earlier post, but I saved this one for its own post. The A380 is a plane some love and some hate. If you have been a passenger on one, you probably love it. It really is a great experience on board. It does seem to make people feel better about themselves that it wasn’t a huge success. Not sure why that happens but people are strange.

I have seen a ton of them over the years, but Etihad was an operator whose fleet I had never photographed until I moved back to the UK. At first this was only from a distance too. When I saw one was coming in a little after the American Airlines special, I decided to wait for it. In an era of white planes, a colourful plane is so welcome, and I find Etihad’s livery very appealing. Here is a great looking jet.

A Few Quick Heathrow Departure Shots

Leave a Reply

My weekend visit to Heathrow was focused on arrivals but, before I headed home, I did want to check out one more thing. This was not for a lot of photography, but I just wanted to see what the location offered. It was along the south side of the field and would give me a view of departing jets from the south runway. It doesn’t provide much in the way of variety of shot types, but it can provide a dynamic angle on jets just after they have rotated. In nice light, it was a few minutes well spent. Not sure I would spend too long there but it would be good for getting something specific. The fence is a nuisance immediately after getting airborne, but AI tools can do a good job of removing that since I wasn’t up high and the planes are soon clear of the fence line.

The Reflection Removal Tool Seems to Have Broken

Leave a Reply

When Adobe introduced the reflection removal tool, I was really impressed by its capabilities. I played with a number of shots that I had taken through windows, and they worked out really well. There have been some updates that Adobe has made, and it feels like it isn’t working as well as it should. I was at Glasgow Airport waiting for a flight home and an Emirates A380 was taxiing out so I grabbed a few shots through the glass. There was a really obvious reflection in the sky area of the shot. I figured that the tool would knock it out easily. Instead, it didn’t even recognise it was there. That is the first of these images. I tried a couple of different shots and none of them worked. I wonder what they have done to the tool that has made it struggle here. I ended up making manual selections and using the AI remove tool to try instead. It was okay but not a great result.

Winter Light on Heathrow Arrivals

Leave a Reply

The arrival at Heathrow of the American Airlines retro 777 got me out to Heathrow on a sunny weekend. I got there early to make sure I was in a location that worked before the plane arrived and, since the spot I had hoped for worked out, I was there in plenty of time. I also saw that there were a few other interesting aircraft (to me) that were coming in. Consequently, I got to photograph a bunch of planes.

With it being Heathrow, I was going to get a load of British Airways’ A320 family jets. I would probably have not normally cared about A319s, but it won’t be long before you don’t see those again. However, the unusual liveries/airlines that came in were of more interest. My first encounter with an Air India A350 or a Middle Eastern Airlines A321 was great. Other airlines/types I have seen before but maybe not photographed in such nice light. Here is a selection of images from a delightful lunchtime as planes flew by. I did try to stop taking pictures and just enjoy the planes for a while too.

Processing With Masks – A Video

Leave a Reply

Every once in a while, I post about some change I have made to my processing techniques for my images. I have posted in the past about how I have been using the masking tools in Lightroom to work on images – particularly those with poor lighting conditions where the background and the subject need significantly different edits.

I have recently tweaked my approach to improve it. This involves an extra step to try and get a better selection of the subject and the background. This also addresses some of the issues I find with Lightroom’s selection algorithms. Sometimes it picks things that just don’t make sense. Anyway, I did a full process of an image and recorded the whole thing with my explanation as to why I was doing what I was doing. It is not a short video so only for those with a serious interest. However, if you want to check it out, here it is.

American’s Retro 777 Catches the Sun

Leave a Reply

A friend of mine in Fort Worth had shared some images of the latest American Airlines plane to be painted in a special livery. This was a 777-300ER that was aiming to replicate their old paint scheme although it was grey rather than polished aluminium. It is a livery that seems to have divided opinion. I was kind of curious as to whether it would show up in the UK at some point and put a trace on the tail number in case it came to Heathrow.

I hadn’t anticipated that it would get a hit almost immediately. It was scheduled on the DFW to Heathrow run on Sunday. Add to that, the weather was looking great. The only downside is that they were due to be arriving on the north runway, and I had not ever shot there. However, I decided to give it a go. I went a bit early to find out if my plan for where to shoot would work. Parking was a bit of an adventure, but the location was a good one, so I waited and chatted to some guys from Gloucestershire that had turned up for the same reason.

I don’t think it is a great paint job. The red nose does have a bit of a Comic Relief feel about it and grey is fine in good light but will be dull on other days. Then again, I do complain about boring liveries, and this is something else. It also got me out and shooting on a day when otherwise I might not have done so glad it all worked out. I am also told this was its first commercial run post repaint so that is something I suppose!