Delta has gone in for the A321neo in a big way. They are taking delivery of them at a pretty steady pace. That doesn’t mean you get them everywhere as some types get focused on regions that others don’t. For a while, we didn’t see too many of the neo jets up this way but that seems to have changed now. I am seeing loads of them if I am around SEA these days. Here is a selection of shots of their jets that I have taken in recent months.
It seems for each generation of airliner, the smallest one from the previous generation is the one that doesn’t do so well. The 737-500 sold reasonably well but the -600 was the unloved on of the NG range. The -700 sold well but the Max 7 is not really attracting any love (except from Southwest). The A320 family has the same thing. Apparently, the small one just doesn’t age well. The 737-600 did not end up with many airlines so I have few shots of them. Aside from the Janets, these are the only operators I have seen.
I have not done well in my previous efforts to photograph NASA’s DC-8 environmental sampling aircraft. I had taken some distant overhead images when I was down at Star Wars Canyon and had hoped to see it fly at the air show at Edwards AFB last year. Sadly, that didn’t happen as it was down for some maintenance issues. With it due for retirement soon, I figured that might have been it. However, I was chatting to some friends a while back and they informed me that it was due to come up to Everett for about ten days of flying in November.
This proved to be the case. A program with Boeing as part of their EcoDemonstrator program had a new 737-10 that is ultimately destined for United (if the Max 10 ever gets certificated) flying with sustainable aviation fuel and the DC-8 flying behind it to sample the air, identify the emissions particles and measure the types of contrails formed but the different elements of the fuels. The Max 10 was painted in a special livery which included the EcoDemonstrator Explorer program name.
The DC-8 was operating from Paine Field for the trials. I was not able to get it arriving, but it was there long enough that I didn’t miss out. These shots are from the first time I was able to see it getting ready to fly and heading out. Over the course of the time it was here, I had further encounters and some of those are worthy of their own posts. Consequently, there will be more to share of this fantastic relic of a bygone era in passenger aviation.
Drake recently announced he was stepping back from touring, but this comes after he has been on quite a touring schedule. Seattle was one stop he made. He has his own 767-200 that is operated by Cargojet for him. It is painted in a distinctive sky-blue livery. It came into Boeing Field for the duration of his stay in the city. Sadly, his schedule means he finishes a show and jumps on the plane to fly to the next location overnight. That meant it arrive some time after midnight and departed at an inconvenient time too. I only got it while parked and the light was not great either. Still…
Frontier Airlines names all of its planes and the names reflect the wildlife artwork on the fin. One of their A321neos was taxiing out at Portland one morning. It had some sort of weasel-like creature on the fin and the name of the plane was Kari the Fisher. I certainly get the Star Wars reference but I had to look up Fishers to find out that they are a member of the weasel family. I had never heard of them before. Nice to think that my enthusiasm for aviation can be educational in other spheres!
One of the reasons we get a stream of unusual freighters into Paine Field is the delivery of sections of fuselage for the production lines. This can include front fuselage sections, center wing boxes and empennage elements. One afternoon an Antonov showed up to deliver some of these parts. While getting the plane arriving was why I was there, it was interesting to see these chunks of future planes (I believe these were for the 767/KC-46 line) being offloaded and driven off to be used.
As mentioned in other posts, I have been playing around with lower shutter speeds when photographing planes at Boeing Field. Getting a blurry background to emphasize the speed of the plane is the goal and it also removes some of the annoying distractions that a cluttered airfield can provide. I use filters to reduce the light in order to get the shutter speed down without having ridiculous apertures. Naturally, I end up with a bunch of blurred photos which get deleted but the selection process for the keepers is what this post is about.
I have some photography friends that don’t like the effect that the differential speeds of the parts of the airframe have on sharpness. A sharp nose might mean a pretty blurry tail since the relative motions as I pan are different. When I am filtering through the shots, I often “focus” on how the nose looks since it is like having the sharp eyes on a wildlife shot. I care less about the tail unless it looks terrible. However, getting the middle of the airframe sharp might result in a sharper overall shot even if the nose is a little blurry.
These are the things I was thinking about with these shots of a 777X landing at Boeing Field. The reason for the post is to see what matters to other people. These shots are a mix of which part of the airframe is sharp and which bits are more blurred. I may spend a fair bit of time deciding on which is best, but I wonder whether anyone looking at them is going to like the same things as me or will even care about it. Maybe the composition of the image is all that they care about, and the pixel peeping is irrelevant. I would really appreciate feedback if you have an opinion.
A while back I got a notification of an A320 departing SEA heading to Korea from an airline called AeroK. I didn’t have the chance to be there and wrote it off as a missed opportunity. Then, earlier this year I got a similar notification on a weekend, so I was able to make the trip down to see this depart. I hadn’t made the connection, but AeroK is Korea in reverse. It is a low-cost carrier that only recently started operations. I assume these were delivery flights for their new fleet since they won’t be operating to the US at this stage of their development. It would be good to see more of the planes at some point.
While the 787-10 was never built at Everett, there have been a few that have come here for completion before delivery to their airlines. One such jet was for Saudia or Saudi Arabians Airlines. It was painted in a scheme that was a close resemblance to their livery from the 80s and 90s. I had thought that it was a retro effort on their part, but I have since heard that this might actually be the livery for the fleet going forwards.
Whether that is the case or not, I did take me back to a shot I got in 1988. I was working for the CAA in the UK on noise measuring duties and got to spend a week inside the fence at Heathrow taking readings of departing aircraft. One of these was a 747-300 of Saudia. I had my camera with me that week and was able to get photos between taking readings. I thought it might be interesting to compare the old Saudia livery with the newer version.
I had been talking with some friends at Boeing Field about the Kalitta 727s that we had seen recently and we got on to the subject of winglets on the 727 and that the jets we had seen didn’t have them. Little would I know that I would address this a short while later. Kalitta Charters II was bringing another 727 in to Paine Field on a weekend evening and it was a different airframe to the ones I had photographed to that point.
It was also fitted with winglets! I am not sure how good the winglet design is on the 727. It looks like a pretty basic design and doesn’t seem to be very well integrated in the way that later winglet designs are. However, it must provide some benefit because they have sold a fair few of them. I clearly made the trip up to Everett to catch its arrival and I wasn’t alone. One more 727 in a time when they are not very abundant and a different configuration to boot.
