The introduction of the Max 8 jets to Icelandair’s fleet has brought their new livery to Seattle. However, the 757s are both a nicer looking jet and sometimes come with better paint jobs. The 757s will be going away so it might be time to get used to the Max fleet. Then again, Icelandair has also made the switch to the A321neo for some operations so, maybe they will paint some of them in schemes a bit like the 757s carried. In the meantime, it is something like this that we need to get used to.
Lufthansa has long served Seattle from their base in Frankfurt. I have taken advantage of this to photograph their various types over the years we were in Seattle. The airline has a second hub in Munich, and they have been running a service from there recently. I think there may have been a route before the pandemic, but it is back now. It seems to run on days when Frankfurt doesn’t so maybe the winter months allow a coordination of services. Summer might have more overlap. They have been using an A350 on the route as opposed to the A340 for Frankfurt. It also comes in later in the day and departs later accordingly. That makes for better lighting at the end of the day when it heads out like I had on this day.
Seattle Tacoma International has been adding a few new airlines in recent times and one of those is Starlux. A Taiwanese carrier, Starlux is not operating to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle with its new A350-900s. It’s already a plane I like to photograph and the Starlux livery is a cool looking one too. I have seen their planes coming in a few times since they first started service (which had its own post) and usually on nicer days which helps make the images a bit better. It’s always an interesting question when new airlines show up as to how well they will do. We shall see whether Starlux has the business model worked out well or not in due course.
I was swinging past SEA one morning and, as I got closer, the sun was not much above the horizon and still below a solid cloud layer. I could see that departing planes were catching the light really well and diverted off my planned route to see if I could get a couple of shots. Things immediately went wrong as I got in a turning lane at the lights behind a coach. Two long cycles of the lights without our filter arrow turning green ate a ton of time up. I eventually pulled out and turned right instead of left before making a U turn and coming back the way I originally wanted. By this time, I had missed a few interesting departures. I did get one Alaska 737 as it climbed out but, by the time it was level with me, it was in shadow. The next departure was almost totally shaded. The sun had risen enough to go behind the cloud bank. I went on my way, but I could have had some gorgeous light if the signals hadn’t screwed things up.
A recent post was focused on some shots from BFI when I was dropping the shutter speed. I had also been playing with this one gloomy morning at Seattle Tacoma International a while back. I was waiting for a specific movement but was passing time with some of the more regular movements. Since they weren’t the most exciting subjects, I tried dropping the shutter speed down to make the motion more apparent. They were really dramatic shutter speeds, but it made a slightly more interesting shot than would other have been the case.
I was clearing out some old shots to try and clean up some hard drive space. As I ran through some of them, I found some shots I took at Seattle Tacoma International during a visit. We were heading out to a part of the airfield to look at where some future work may be undertaken. As we drove across the ramp, I did grab a few shots of the aircraft as they taxied around and also as some were departing. It is fun to shoot from a ramp as you get a very different perspective on things.
Plenty of airlines switch equipment around on routes as the demand ebbs and flows. One that seems to do this more than most when it comes to flights to Seattle is Asiana. Their long-haul fleet includes Boeing 777-200ERs, Airbus A350-900s and Airbus A330-300s and all of them seem to appear. The A330s are not as regular as they used to be but you never really know whether it is going to be an A350 or a 777 at any point. Here is a selection of images I have got over time of the three types as they arrive and depart from SEA.
The increase in air traffic post the pandemic has been significant and international travel has been boosted. Seattle Tacoma International Airport has been adding to its international destinations with new operators on a pretty regular basis and the most recent new addition has been Starlux. Starlux is a Taiwanese airline operating services to Taipei with its fleet of new Airbus A350-900s. I had seen that they were operating to San Francisco and was a little jealous of not getting to see this new fleet but, now they are coming here, I can see them too. Here is one of their jets on approach to SEA to inaugurate the service.
A previous post covered a recent Westwind arrival at SEA one weekend. As I mentioned in that post, I was shooting from a new location for me. Having not shot there before, I didn’t want to make the Westwind the first thing I photographed. I used some of the preceding airliners to try a couple of spots to see what the angles were like and how much the surrounding trees obscured things. These shots are from the experimenting.
Alaska Air Cargo has been having a tricky time with its new freighters. These are conversions of some of its older 737-800s and will provide more capacity than the current 737-300BDSF fleet. I got the first of the jets not long after it arrived, but it then was out of service for ages. They have finally got it in regular use now but the delivery of the second aircraft was delayed while they sorted things out. It is now delivered and operating regularly, and I caught it climbing out of SEA one weekend. The second shot is the same airframe back when it was in passenger service a few years ago.
