Tag Archives: Airbus

Asiana A350 As A Quick Test

I made a quick trip to SeaTac one Sunday for another visitor that I was keen to catch and that will have its own post.  I ended up shooting from a sub-optimal location and one that I had never used before.  I didn’t know exactly what I could expect.  Fortunately, prior to the arrival, an Asiana A350 was due in.  It was about 30 minutes ahead of the one I was after so, if things didn’t work out, I had time to try moving to somewhere else.

Fortunately, while heat haze was going to be a problem and the light angle wasn’t great, neither of these were things I could do anything about and the location did provide a reasonable angle on the jet.  There were some lamp poles which I noted to be ready for next time and the jet went behind the trees as it crossed the threshold but it did seem like a usable location for the intended target to come.

Philippines Airlines Spot the Difference

Someone recently was after a picture of a Philippines Airlines Boeing 747.  When I looked up my shots of this airline, I came across a picture of one of their A340s landing at SFO.  It had an anniversary marking on the fuselage.  Just below it in the catalog was a 777-300ER which also had the same marking and was also landing at SFO.  The similarity of the aircraft in these shots amused me so here they both are in case something like this is of interest to you too.

Air France A380

The Air France A380s have gone away.  Their retirement had already been identified prior to the COVID-19 outbreak but it accelerated their departure.  I had shot them on a few occasions with SFO and LAX being regular destinations.  Since I won’t be seeing them again, here is a farewell tribute to the Air France A380.  Hope one or two of the airframes find a second life.

Delta A220s (Or C Series for the Purist)

The Airbus A220 is now getting more widely established in service.  Indeed, the slightly smaller and highly efficient nature of the jet means that it is likely to be pretty popular as service gets reestablished for a lot of airlines.  Sadly, I haven’t seen any other than those with Delta.  I have seen a decent number of those, though.  As a continuation of my lockdown trawl of the archives, here is a variety of shots of Delta’s A220 flight.  If you prefer to call this a C Series from its Bombardier days, feel free but that ship has sailed!

Directly Under an A320

I did a little positioning to try and get a shot from directly under an airliner as it was making its approach to SeaTac.  I was out near Boeing Field so they were still reasonably high.  I managed to get myself right in alignment with the jet which, in this case, was an Alaska Airliners A320.  When I first saw the shot, I have to admit I thought it was an Embraer E175 but then I read the lettering under the nose and realized it was bigger than I thought.  I like the idea of a very different view of a familiar subject.

Misty 330s

While at Boeing Field, you get a steady stream of traffic for SeaTac overhead.  With Delta’s substantial presence at Seattle, the right time of day can mean a few widebodies.  The A330 is a big part of their operations and we currently get the old and the new with the -300s and the -900 neos.  The conditions looked pretty clear above me but there must have been a lot of moisture around because the jets seemed to be pulling a bit of vapor with them and going in and out of clouds that they seemed to hard to see without them there.

I played around with the processing a bit to see what I could do to show up the moisture more effectively.  It gets a little more interest out of a shot that would otherwise not be worthy of any note.

Air to Air With United Jets – Or Is It?

When putting together some images for a group online that I am involved with, a dug out a couple of shots of jets departing O’Hare I shot years back.  When coming off 22L, some of the jets make an early turn to the south and you can get a view of them that is either quite level with the wing line or slightly above.  When shooting them, they are climbing so it is obvious what you were shooting.  However, as I looked at these shots, it occurred to me that they looked a lot like an air to air position except the angles were wrong because of the climb.  Since I had shot quite tightly, re-cropping the shot required some Photoshop work.

Taking the image out of Lightroom and in to Photoshop, I selected the crop tool and rotated the image to be the sort of angle that an air to air shot might be.  Doing this crops off the nose and tail of the jet.  However, one feature of the crop tool in Photoshop is that, if you then drag the edges of the tool back out, you can expand the canvas size.  You now have the whole plane in shot but have added some white space in each corner where no image previously existed.

It is a simple task to then use Content Aware Fill to add sky back in to these areas.  The result is a shot that looks almost as if you had been flying in formation at altitude.  Would you have spotted it?  Having done it with an A320, I then had a go with a 757.  The light angle makes it look a bit like we are flying along towards a setting sun.  I was rather pleased with the trick.

Sketchy A350 Paint Job?

I shot this Singapore A350 landing at Haneda in January of 2020.  When I was reviewing the shots, I saw something odd on the roof.  At first I thought it was markings for rescue areas but it really didn’t look that good.  I am wondering whether the original paint job was pretty shoddy and the paint is peeling off.  It doesn’t look good to me.

Some A400M Samples

As I was skipping through some images, I saw a few extra shots of the A400M at RIAT.  I figured that I hadn’t seen many examples of the transport in service – just the test aircraft performing in displays.  However, I have seen both Luftwaffe and Armee de l’Air planes at times so thought I would share a few shots of them plus some test planes for good measure.

JAL’s Special A350

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 20th 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.