Category Archives: civil

PDX Evening Arrivals

Back in the summer of 2017, we made a trip to Oregon for the solar eclipse. You can read all about that in previous posts here and here. The night before the eclipse, we stayed in Portland and the most convenient place to stay was at a hotel near the airport. The location turned out to be between the two runways at PDX and that evening the approach paths brought the planes in from our direction to the runways.

I figured I could pop out for a few minutes and photograph some of the arrivals. The evening light was coming in and we were a little on the wrong side of the closer runway but this was an impromptu shoot so I didn’t mind. A little biz jet traffic came in on the other runway while I got a selection of Q400s, FedEx freighters and the usual narrowbodies.

Since I was close to the centerline of the approach, it provided a slightly different perspective to that which I would normally go for. Looking up and almost straight down the nose is interesting. Not something to do all the time but certainly some variety (particularly if it only requires you to walk out to the parking lot). It’s good to try different angles on a regular basis and avoid getting repetitive.

A Sick IL-76 Waiting for Help Perhaps?

Leave a Reply

Suddenly IL-76s are appearing at Paine Field on a regular basis. I came across one by surprise not long ago but didn’t get a chance to track its progress. However, a quick check on Flightaware showed it had departed. Fortunately, I checked the flight and realized that it did a quick pattern and then landed again. After that, it didn’t move for ages and was still there when I next visited. I wonder whether it got sick and has been awaiting parts? Anyway, since taking this shot it has departed to Iceland successfully. At the time of writing, it is back though. So much Ilyushin traffic!

Lufthansa A340 and His Buddy

Leave a Reply

Heading back to Hawthorne after my flight over LAX, another plane was coming in to the southern complex. I had forgotten it was due and, after moving to the south of the field, we could have got a good shot of it landing. Never mind. This Lufthansa A340-600 beat me but I was able to get a shot of him from a distance as we headed in and, since there was a parallel approach on the northside, I got his little cousin in the shot too.

One of My Better Encounters with the Dreamlifter

Leave a Reply

I have had some mixed luck with the Dreamlifter. Light failing at the wrong moment or the sun setting just before departure are two examples. On this occasion, though, things worked out pretty well for me. I was visiting Future of Flight so I was on their viewing deck when the jet departed. I watched them start up (including some nice puffs of smoke as fuel and oil burned off at ignition) but they were partly obscured by a hangar.

Pushback made everything easier and they then taxied right towards me. It is true that you are looking into the sun at this point but it was still not a problem to get shots of the plane without a problem. They taxied out past the parked IL-76 and then held in front of us for a moment. The wind was good for northerly departures so they taxied across the threshold and then down Alpha to the other end of Paine Field.

Take off had to wait for a couple of Cessnas and then they lined up and headed our way. I was definitely not alone on the viewing terrace at this point! Little areas of snow alongside the runway were apparent when the outboard engines disturbed them. Then they were rotating and climbing towards us. Finally I got some decent conditions for some shots. Now, I guess, this will happen a lot and I will wonder why I ever was bothered about not shooting the jet in nice light.

LAX is Attracting the Neos

Leave a Reply

The A320neo (and more recently the A321neo) has been a big seller for Airbus. However, introduction has not been smooth with both of the engine suppliers struggling to meet their commitments for powerplants (Pratt and Whitney definitely having the worse time of it). Despite this, the neos are turning up in service in a lot of places but I had not seen a lot of them. My trip to LAX changed that a bit.

Here I got to see a few operators with the neos in service. The far larger fan diameter of the new generation engines makes the neos reasonably easy to spot and I like a big high bypass engine so I appreciate the change. It won’t be too long before they are around in huge numbers and won’t be worthy of comment but, on this trip, I was pleased to see so many.

Qantas Celebrates Aborigine Art Again

Leave a Reply

Qantas has decorated previous aircraft with liveries that encompass aborigine art. Their Wunala Dreaming aircraft was well known around the world and, in an age when airline liveries tend to be rather bland, these colorful jets are a welcome change. They have taken a similar route with one of their new Boeing 787-9s and I saw it at Paine Field during test flying. It came in from the south and executed a go around from relatively low level.

Then they caught me out by heading north to turn and make an approach from the opposite direction. This required some rather swift repositioning by me. In fact, I got to the parking lot as they were on final approach and, rather than park, I just pulled to the side, ran up the bank, grabbed the shot and then got back in the car to park properly. It was tight but it worked out okay.

Antonov Hanging Around on the Ground

Leave a Reply

I have shot a lot of AN124 Ruslan movements in recent years whether in the Bay Area or now we are in Seattle. I am still happy to see them, of course, but something a little different is welcome. When I arrived in LA, there was one parked up on the ramp near the museum. I figured it would be gone by the time I was back for my helicopter flight but I was wrong. It was still there. Consequently, I was happy with a few new views on a familiar beast.

Most West Coast??

Leave a Reply

The merger of the Virgin America operations into Alaska Airlines means combining the Airbus fleet with the Boeings. Virgin America had ordered some A321neos and these are in the process of delivery just as things are being merged. Alaska chose to change the livery on the next one off the line and adopted a scheme designed to reflect the number of flights they now operate on the west coast. The Most West Coast jet has not been popular since it seems to lack branding of either airline. It was at the gate when I landed in LA and I saw it taxiing out later that morning. I wonder how long it will last in this form?

Wamos – A New Airline for Me

Leave a Reply

There are many airlines around the world so plenty that you probably haven’t heard of and may never see. Finding one in your backyard is a surprise though. There I was hovering over LAX in a Robinson shooting pictures of the arriving and departing jets and a 747-400 appears on the approach. Since they are becoming fewer and further between these days, this was a good thing. When I saw the name on it, I had no idea what it was.

Wamos is apparently a Spanish airline. They have been operating some flights to LA but, up until this point (and the subsequent research I did), I had never heard of them. I guess we just never crossed paths. A new airline and a 747 was a pretty sweet combination. I was definitely on a roll on this flight as I got a number of treats.

Wingtip Treatments

Leave a Reply

Richard Whitcomb was an aerodynamicist at NASA who pioneered a number of technologies that benefit the aviation world today. One of those was his development of winglets. These are the wingtip treatments that improve lift to drag ratio and climb performance without significantly extending the wing. While his work was clear, it took a while for them to be implemented widely. Now, most aircraft involve some sort of wingtip extension. However, the first aircraft to replicate his design approach was the MD-11.

The MD-11 had a split winglet with a larger extension upwards and a smaller one downwards. This reflected some of Whitcomb’s original drawings. Strangely, after this, the focus was on upward winglets only (although the Airbus approach for a while was what they called a fence on the wingtip which was something more in keeping with the Whitcomb approach). Recently, there has been a return to the original with APB introducing the Split Scimitar and Boeing producing their own Split Winglet design (not as elegant as the APB approach in my mind.

Most airliners and many business jets now incorporate a tweaked wing tip configuration. Maximizing the aerodynamic performance requires squeezing as much as you can out of the design within the space constraints you have. The following pictures are examples of the different types used.