Tag Archives: jet

Concorde Fifty Years On

I recently saw something that announced it was fifty years since the first commercial services operated by Concorde. Air France and British Airways operated simultaneous flights to commence operations (although to different destinations – I am pretty sure I recall from my childhood them both landing at Washington Dulles at the same time and parking nose to nose). I didn’t take a lot of photos of Concorde over the years, but I did get some. Here are a few old film scans of BA Concorde flying. Sadly, despite having seen it fly by my flat many times when a student, I never spent the time taking any shots.

Only Slightly Better Prepared for the A340 This Time

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You might look at this image and ask, “why make a post about it?” That is a fair question I suppose. The first thing is it is an A340 so that might be enough for me. However, it is more about my luck with getting these European A340s as they operate in Bournemouth. This time I was walking with a longer lens. Last time I had one overfly me, I only had a short lens and so it was a bit distant. This was an improvement. However, this time it was a bit rainy and overcast so not great conditions. The specs of raindrops are clearly visible in the image. That might ruin it for me but, for some reason, this time I feel like it adds something that reflects my frustration with trying to get good shots of these jets. Whatever way I try and justify it, it doesn’t really matter. I just like it.

Not Sure the Laminar Flow is Surviving

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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.

AN-74 High Lift System

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I shared some images of the Egyptian Air Force AN-74 that came to RIAT in 2025 in a previous post. I took a ton of shots during RIAT and have been pretty busy throughout the rest of 2025 so took forever to get through some of the images to cull them down. When looking through some of the shots at the end of 2025, I was quite taken by the high lift system on the AN-74. Previously I focused on the span of the wing but here are some shots that show the flap system and the surfaces across which the engine efflux passes to generate additional lift. It is quite a feat of engineering.

Reworking an Old Shot with Modern Denoise

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Periodically, when thinking about the latest processing tools that I have available, it takes me back to some older shots that would be interesting to rework. This shot of one of the Blue Angels jets was taken at NAS Oceana during one of their air shows. I was shooting with the 1D Mk IIN and at ISO 800. At the time, this was a really high ISO and resulted in a lot of noise in the images. (As an aside, I did find that printing did not show the noise at anything like the level that was apparent on screen.) Even without the denoise function, the latest raw convertor makes a decent job of the file but I figured I would use the denoise too. I think the file comes out really cleanly as a result. It also helps that, as an 8MP file, the processing is a lot quicker!

Well, They Didn’t Survive

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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.

Bizjets At RIAT

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The number of operators attending RIAT attracts a lot of corporate attention. Consequently, there are a few bizjets that show up at Fairford too. Most of these are civilian operated but I may have been a little lax and included a military operated bizjet just because I can. Here is a selection of the corporate types that showed up during the several days of RIAT.

RAF’s First Wedgetail

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The provision of airborne early warning seems to be a topic that is vexing countries currently. The RAF retired its E-3 fleet without a replacement. They then ordered five Wedgetails only to later reduce the order to three. Now there is discussion of increasing it again. Meanwhile the US decided to similarly replace the E-3 fleet with Wedgetails and ordered two.

A change of administration brought a plan to scrap that idea, use satellite surveillance and buy some more Hawkeyes in the interim. Congress is pushing back on that. Meanwhile, NATO had planned to go down the Wedgetail route but is now looking elsewhere given the lack of commitment from the US to the platform. SAAB’s GlobalEye has since picked up more orders including one from France and NATO might follow that route. All a bit of a mess.

Anyway, all of that is a long prelude to the fact that the first of the RAF’s Wedgetail fleet made an appearance at RIAT in 2025. It was supposed to appear on one day but apparently scrubbed. Consequently, it was rearranged to come in the following day. I imagine the RAF didn’t want the embarrassment of it failing to appear. It made a run in with the Red Arrows providing formation support. Then it made solo passes and an approach for a touch and go.

I don’t know how far off service entry it is, but testing continues at Boscombe Down. I have seen its distinctive outline on the airfield when driving along the A303. Hopefully they will be active before too long and also that, this time, the funding is provided to keep the systems current unlike the issues that led to the E-3 fleet fading away.

Another A350 Operator for Me

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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.

Images Won’t Let You Experience the Scream!

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The Pakistan Air Force IL-78 showed up at RIAT in 2025 supporting the JF-17 Thunders. Unlike the more recent versions of the IL-76 family, this jet has the original engines. They are a low bypass ratio jet and are not in any way quiet. The high-pitched scream that they produce when idling is really hard on the ears. An occasional bit of fingers jammed in ears was necessary when the angle to the plane made the noise particularly painful, but it was worth it. However, nothing about stills images can convey just how loud these four engines were!