Category Archives: civil

Primer 747-8F Almost Makes a First Flight

I love jets that aren’t painted. I know Boeing uses a film to protect the bare metal and it isn’t primer but it certainly looks like it. A 747-8F was scheduled for a first flight at Paine Field prior to heading to Portland for painting. It taxied out and lined up. I thought I was going to get a first flight for this jet. It did a high speed taxi run and aborted takeoff as is the norm but something wasn’t right. They taxied back to the ramp and shut down. They weren’t flying on this day. I was a bit annoyed!

Avro York

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The Avro Lancaster is a very famous bomber from the Second World War but its transportation derivative is a lot less well known. Outside the aviation community, it is probably totally unknown. It is the Avro York (War of the Roses comments are welcome) and it takes the flying surfaces and power plants of the Lancaster and mates them to a larger fuselage for transporting people. It was an important type in the latter stages of the war and immediately afterwards. This example is in the main hangar at the IWM Duxford.

Roll Out and Takeoff of a New Max 8

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I’ve seen a few 737s make their first flights at Renton. This example occurred on weekend morning and it caught me out a bit. They roll the jets across the bridge from the assembly flight line to the runway flight line. The bridge crosses the river just south of the park. Once across, they are ready to start up. This takes longer than a normal start up since this is the first time the plane is going to fly.

The fast taxi with rejected takeoff is the next step. This takes place on the runway and, in this case, was heading towards me up near the Lake Washington end of the Renton runway. All being well with this, it is time to take off. I had hoped that this would involve a back taxi and then departure over the lake but I was to be disappointed. They turned at the lake and powered up for a departure to the south. I had not anticipated this so was badly placed. The moist morning air resulted in vapor in the inlets as they accelerated past me and then climbed off in the distance.

JAL’s Special A350

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Japan Air Lines has been taking delivery of a bunch of Airbus A350s recently. I was interested to see them at Haneda where they seem to be based as opposed to Narita. Interestingly, for a plane with substantial range, they are being used from a lot of short sectors at the moment. On the station platforms, they had some posters about a special A350 that was celebrating the 20^th anniversary of a Japanese boyband, Arashi.

Fortunately, this jet was being used on internal flights and it was due back in to Haneda when I was there. With the crummy weather, the JAL terminal roof top viewing deck was fine for photos in the afternoon since, with no sun, there was no backlighting. The A350 came in to view and stopped in a cloud of spray from reverse thrust and then taxied back and parked right under me. Plenty of opportunities to get some shots of it.

Renton Flight Line

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The flight line near the runway at Renton is always worth a look. The majority of the planes (when production is normal) will be airliners but one spot at the south end is likely to have a P-8 Poseidon in place. Such was the case this morning with a US Navy example heading the line.

Haneda Seems to Be Home to Special Liveries

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I spent a little time at Haneda on a recent trip to Tokyo. It was not an ideal day for photography but it had its possibilities. One thing that really surprised me was that I seemed to see a bunch of planes with special paint schemes. I don’t know whether Japanese airlines just have a lot of specials or whether Haneda is the place that they all come but I saw a lot. One of them was from China too. Here are some shots of the specials from that day excluding one that will have its own post.

Dreamliner Wings Moving to the Factory

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I have shown a bunch of images of the Dreamlifter bringing in components to Paine Field for the production line including shots of the unloading of parts. During a more recent visit, I happened to be there when they were moving a pair of wings from the storage facility to the production facility across the airfield. They had escort vehicles to lead and follow up as they crossed the runway. The wings look a lot less impressive in the travel jigs. The completed 787 looks substantial but the wings alone don’t provide the same impact.

Haven’t Seen Many Slingsbys Around Here

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The Slingsby T-67 was a design that was quite popular when I was younger. They were aerobatic and were used for training by a number of establishments. I didn’t think of it as a plane that got much traction outside the UK market but maybe they did okay. Seeing one in the US was a bit of a surprise. This example was taking off at Paine Field. I wondered whether it was an ex-military example that had been sold to the civil market. If anyone knows the background, do let me know.

Southwest Max 7s Awaiting Release

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The 737 Max 8 has been the best seller of the Max product line. The Max 7 has barely sold at all and Boeing even had to redesign it to be a shrink of the Max 8 rather than the rework of the -700 that it was originally intended to be. Southwest and WestJet have bought them but they are about the only ones. I guess production examples have started to come off the line during the grounding. When you go around the back of Renton, amongst the stored Southwest jets are a bunch of the Max 7s. I guess certification and delivery of these will be something intended to follow on closely from the return to service of the Max 8 and Max 9 jets.

Cranfield Jetstreams

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I read that Cranfield is getting a new SAAB 340 to be used as a flying testbed. It is replacing the current Jetstream 31. The plane is used for test work but it is also used as a flying classroom for aeronautical engineering students. The Jetstream 31 was an old BAE Systems airframe (one I was involved with in my days at Warton) and it replaced a Jetstream 200. That old Astazou powered airframe was in use in the late 80s when I went through the course. Here are shots of that old plane when we were using it as well as the current one when it showed up at RIAT.