I made a mourning trek to SEA one weekend to catch the Salmon Thirty Salmon jet before it got repainted.  I shot a bunch of planes before it departed and one thing of interest after it left and was getting ready to head home.  A quick check of what else was due out showed me that the Singapore Airlines A350-900 was due out shortly.  It’s a nice-looking jet and the morning light was still good, so I figured there was no harm in waiting a short while longer to catch it.

Regular readers know I am partial to the A350 and some of my earliest shots of the type were operated by Singapore in to SFO when we lived in California.  Their livery has a classic style to it in my mind.  Besides, the trip to Singapore is a long one making full use of the A350’s range capabilities so it was likely to be heavy and would use a good chunk of the runway so would still be quite low as it passed me by.  All good reasons to get the shot.

Singapore Airlines has been flying into SEA for a while.  Initially they stopped at Vancouver and then continued to SEA before reversing the journey, but I guess loads were good enough that they changed to a direct flight.  It arrives first thing in the morning and then heads out mid morning to go home.  I have tried to get shots of it but the combination of weather issues and making it work for a weekend morning when I can plausibly be there has been tricky.  One weekend, the weather wasn’t great, but I decided to give it a go.

I was looking to shoot from a location that gives an angle on the touchdown zone which I figured would help overcome the less than ideal weather conditions with more ground in the shot.  However, I was disappointed to find that they were bringing the jet in on the outer runway.  Consequently, it was a bit more distant than ideal (although the crummy weather meant haze was less of an issue than might otherwise have been the case).

The following week, I had a second go.  The weather was slightly better but still not great.  I was rather worried that I was going to have a repeat of the previous week.  Not great conditions and would it go to the outside.  As I watched the track inbound, I could see a bunch of other aircraft vectoring in for their approaches.  Busy arrivals can often mean the heavies get sent to the inner runway to avoid wake turbulence requirements causing delays to the narrow bodies.  This was the case and I got what I was after.  The only issue was that there were quite a few planes taxiing out for departure and obscuring my shot (and throwing out some heat as well).  However, I did get a shot so let’s count that as a win.