This United 747 was flying over the Bay during the Fleet Week display as I posted about in this post. One thing that was very obvious as the aircraft was put through its paces by the crew was that the number two engine seemed to be burning a lot cleaner than the other three. You wouldn’t pay much attention to the exhaust of a jet except when there is a clear discrepancy and, in this case, the number two was so obviously less smoky, I noticed. Maybe it was fresh from overhaul.
Air shows include a lot of planes that are regular performers. However, some shows manage to include something a little different and having a big airline with a local hub will help. The Chicago Air and Water Show would feature American Airlines jets when I lived there. San Francisco Fleet Week gets United to bring a jet. This year they brought a 747-400 to the flying display. Seeing a big jet like this thrown around the bay is really cool. Whether it is flying low over the bay or turning in near the Golden Gate Bridge, this is something you don’t get to see too often.
When APB launched their Scimitar winglet retrofit program, they picked up a number of customer pretty quickly. I was soon seeing them fitted across the 800 and 900 series 737s of a number of operators. United and Alaska both seem to have gone all in pretty quickly. However, I guess the 700 series jets were not such a high priority – maybe the business case is not as compelling. Consequently, I hadn’t seen them fitted to any 700 series jets until I came across this United example. It was the first I had seen in action. I still haven’t seen many so I wonder whether this is going to be a fleet fitment or if United are testing it on a few airframes before making a larger decision. Anyone know?
Airline operates are usually pretty predictable – at least provided the weather is not too extreme. You tend to get jets on glide path and at the appropriate speed. This results in touchdowns being reasonably close to the same place each time. However, poor are flying these planes and they introduce some variability to the mix. A recent visit to SFO included one United 747 that was a bit off target.
First I should point out that the runway in use is a long one and that a 747 at the end of a flight can get down safely in a lot less space than is provided. In this case, that helped. The 747 came across the threshold and flared for landing. It was higher than normal and must have been carrying some speed because it floated a long way down the runway. When it eventually touched down, we had the city skyline behind it which only emphasized how far it had gone. No harm done and it exited with plenty to spare but it was conspicuous enough to have got all present commenting on it.
While the world’s 747 fleet is progressively running down, United is still a big operator of the type and SFO is a focus of their operations of the type. Consequently, during the surge of departures to Asia in late morning, you will have a pretty steady stream of Jumbos taxiing out and taking off. While Roger and I were out, a couple of them taxied out at the same time. We had one holding short of 28L and the other was in the gap between 28L and 28R as incoming aircraft approached. I joked with Roger that the two of them should line up on parallel runways and depart in formation.
When the inbound jets had landed, both aircraft moved forward again and, sure enough, they lined up on both runways. We couldn’t help but laugh at this since they seemed to be following our instructions. You will regularly see parallel departures on the 01 runways but we couldn’t believe that we would have the same thing here. Sadly, we were right. The closer jet departed first and was then followed a short while later by the second. It would have been very cool to see them climb out side by side but that was a bit too much to ask.
The parallel approaches at SFO are well enough known. I have blogged about them myself here and here. Getting two planes in the same shot is a cool result but it isn’t often that you get three and all of them from the same airline. I was out with Hayman and Roger when a pair of jets came down the approach almost perfectly together. We all got shots of them as they came in. I didn’t notice anything further until I was looking through the shots back at home. Apparently, a United jet was departing prior to the arrival of this pair and it happened to fly out on a path that aligned with my view of the pair. Three jets in one shot!
You don’t often get to see an airliner maneuvering at low level. They tend to be up and away or approaching to land in a stable configuration. Each year at Fleet Week, united bring one of their airliners as part of the air show and it gets to be thrown around the bay, if not with abandon, at least with more vigor than is the norm for an airliner. In the past, the 747 has been the display aircraft of choice. Since I have been here, they have been using the 757.
The bay provides a nice backdrop for any display but one that uses a big airplane is well suited to the area since they have to maintain a reasonable distance from the shore at all times unless they are climbing out over the crowd. A combination of clean passes and gear and flaps deployed passes made for some good variety and some aggressive climb outs at high power and low weight were nice. Watching the plane turn over the Marin side of the bay was also pretty cool.
This may not be the most dynamic of air show performances but it has a novelty factor that makes it worth seeing and it certainly brought some variety to the show on the day. I’m just glad I got to see it this year. Last year they displayed on the day I was there but the low cloud base meant that we mainly heard them above the clouds but saw very little.
Every once in a while you see something and you have no idea what is going on. As a United 767 climbed out from O’Hare, it was streaming something from the fuselage. I saw it through the viewfinder at the time and figured it would be obvious what it was when I looked at the pictures. It turns out I still don’t know what was happening. Anyone reading this that has any ideas, please let me know what you think.
Fleet Week in San Francisco was something I had been looking forward to since moving here. The air display over the bay had looked great in shots I had seen from previous years and that combined with the parade of naval ships sounded good. Sadly, things didn’t quite go to plan. The parade of ships happened but there weren’t very many of them so it was not a huge parade. Then the flying started but, with cloud cover coming in from the Golden Gate, the flying tended to be pushed farther into the bay and away from us.
We did get a couple of V-22s doing a tour of the bay before the real flying display kicked off and the weather improved for Fat Albert’s part of the Blue Angels’ performance. However, the cloud came right back and the Blues did a few orbits above the clouds over us and then gave up. Apparently the weather was better on the following days but I could not be there for that so I missed out. However, I got to spend the day with a couple of friends so it was still better than being at work!
Just a quick joke. I was out shooting wildlife when there were a couple of airliners overhead. It is a bit early in the year for airshows but I guess this might count as my first crossing shot of two jets for the year. Hopefully there will be a few more!