Lufthansa was a launch customer for the A320neo and took delivery of some of the earliest airframes. They now have an extensive fleet of the jets and they seem to be flying in to Heathrow very frequently. I ended up shooting a bunch of their jets in my brief excursion. I am not a big fan of their newest livery but, while it looks dull on the bigger jets, I actually feel like it suits the A320 a little better.
Shooting at an airport you don’t normally get to shoot at means you have the opportunity to shoot airlines that you wouldn’t see otherwise. What can be even nicer is if you get a special livery on one of these jets. (There is a small element in the back of your head that worries about not having shot the normal livery and that you still won’t have because of the special but that churlish thought needs to be suppressed!) Three of the jets coming in from overseas were in special finishes as was one of the locals. British Airways had an A320neo in a paint finish that was sky blue. I actually watched it depart too when waiting to board my flight home.
Kenya Airways flies their 787s in to London. The jet that came in on this day had a graphic of rhinos on the rear fuselage. Not a totally different livery but a nice addition. Brussels Airlines flies their A320s in to Heathrow and the airframe I saw was in a Tintin scheme that covered the whole airframe. It looked really good. Royal Jordanian was the last of my specials. Its 787 had a graphic advertising the city of Petra which covered the side of the jet. All nice efforts by the respective airlines.
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.
