While I was shooting from a distance, I did get a shot of a United 767 heading into Heathrow. This jet is painted in the sustainable aviation fuel livery. I reminded me of a 737 I had seen from them in an Eco livery. Add to that there is the Max 10 that was involved in the fuel trials with NASA and I have a few of the United special liveries. Here are those planes.
I’m not sure what it was that got me to these pictures. I was working on something other project and then found myself looking at some shots from a visit to LAX a long time ago. Two planes jumped out at me from that day. One was a Lufthansa A340-300 and the other was a British Airways 747-400. Both were taking off later in the day and the light was very nice. I decided both deserved a re-edit.
The backgrounds for both jets were a little busy and so I decided to try something similar to my processing for airborne shots but that I hadn’t done much on the ground. I used the smart masking tools to select the aircraft. Then I inverted the mask to select the background. This allowed me to take the lighting down for the background and also make things a little cooler with the white balance. Then I could warm up the plane a little more and brighten it up. This helps to separate the aircraft from the background and make it more the focus of the shots.
The BA fleet of 747s are long gone now and passenger 747s are definitely a rarity. The Lufthansa A340s are still operating but only because of the delays to new aircraft deliveries. It won’t be too long before they are heading to the desert. This will be a nice reminder of the fun stuff I used to be able to photograph.
The crash of the UPS MD-11 when one of the engines separated at rotation resulted in a grounding of the entire fleet of DC-10s and MD-11s. The process for returning the fleets to service continues as I write this, but I recently heard that UPS has decided that they won’t bother to return their fleet and will accelerate a retirement process that was already being planned.
Since Boeing Field was somewhere I got to spend a lot of time and was a location that got regular visits from UPS MD-11s, I got to see them on a regular basis. I left before they did but now no one there will get to see this beefy jet in UPS colours again. Here are some of the shots I have got of them over the years. I do hope that other operators will still have a need for their examples and this won’t be the end of the road for this type.
I have posted some previous shots looking up the approach at Heathrow as the jets are lined up for landing. The reason I have chosen to post this is that there is a bit more of a dynamic element to it. I like the jet crossing in the background before it turns back in to align with the approach path. The combination of the spaced out planes and the view of the turn in seemed pretty cool to me.
The British European Airways liveried Airbus that British Airways has been operating for a number of years was due to be disposed of. As new jets come into the fleet, the older jets are headed for parting out. However, the delivery rate from Airbus has apparently not been enough to meet the requirements of BA and they are having to send some older jets for major checks when they become due rather than park them. This will give them an extended life until the new jets can make it. This one was scheduled to go but has now been sent for a check. What I don’t know is whether it is due a repaint or not so we might or might not get to see it again.
I recently saw something that announced it was fifty years since the first commercial services operated by Concorde. Air France and British Airways operated simultaneous flights to commence operations (although to different destinations – I am pretty sure I recall from my childhood them both landing at Washington Dulles at the same time and parking nose to nose). I didn’t take a lot of photos of Concorde over the years, but I did get some. Here are a few old film scans of BA Concorde flying. Sadly, despite having seen it fly by my flat many times when a student, I never spent the time taking any shots.
You might look at this image and ask, “why make a post about it?” That is a fair question I suppose. The first thing is it is an A340 so that might be enough for me. However, it is more about my luck with getting these European A340s as they operate in Bournemouth. This time I was walking with a longer lens. Last time I had one overfly me, I only had a short lens and so it was a bit distant. This was an improvement. However, this time it was a bit rainy and overcast so not great conditions. The specs of raindrops are clearly visible in the image. That might ruin it for me but, for some reason, this time I feel like it adds something that reflects my frustration with trying to get good shots of these jets. Whatever way I try and justify it, it doesn’t really matter. I just like it.
If you look at the most recent Boeing aircraft, they have adopted a far deeper inlet lip design. I don’t know whether it is connected but they have been doing work on having laminar flow around the engine cowlings. When the 787 first came along, airlines were not allowed to have them painted anything other than white. That has since been relaxed but there was a performance benefit to the design that was needed to meet promised goals. Consequently, I imagine that this area is quite sensitive to disturbance. That makes this Qantas 787-9 stand out to me. There was a load of patching on the inlet when I saw it taking off from Heathrow heading to Perth. That is a very long flight and tests the performance of the Dreamliner in its nominal configuration. I guess the impact can’t be that bad.
I wasn’t terribly shocked when I recently heard that New Pacific ceased trading. The model seemed a bit suspect when it was first announced and they rapidly transitioned to charter work and away from schedule flying. I still liked seeing their 757s when they showed up in Seattle but I never thought they would survive long. Sadly, that proved to be the case. Here are some other shots of their operations which we won’t see again.
Regular visitors to the blog will know I find the A350 to be the best-looking airliner in production at the moment. During a visit to Heathrow, I got my first look at one of the more recent operators. Air India started taking delivery of jets last year. They have done the decent thing and put a colourful livery on their planes as opposed to the usual mostly white. I am grateful for this as well as for the good light I had when it came in.