The A340s are disappearing from the
fleets of major airlines pretty quickly as the 787s and A350s come in to
service. Lufthansa is one airline that
still has not only the A340-600 in service but the A340-300 too. I shot a 600 on approach to SFO last year and
it got me wondering just how long they have remaining in service. While fuel prices are relatively low, they
may hang on but higher fuel prices could accelerate their demise. We shall see.
In the meantime, here are some of their fleet in service across the
years.
Korean Air 777s are hardly a rarity so
would not normally warrant a blog post.
However, this one arrived at a time when the light seemed to be
particularly appealing and I was pleasantly surprised by the shot. I figured it could have a blog post on what
is probably a cold and rainy winter’s day.
Sorry for the corny pun but I just
couldn’t resist. One of my favorite
airliners to shoot has been the Air Tahiti Nui A340-300. I have seen them at LAX on a number of
visits. Shooting them taking off on the
south complex has been possible on a few occasions and I was super lucky to get
one of them landing on the north complex when I was overhead in the
helicopter. The A340s are getting a bit
old at this point, though, so their replacement has been ordered and it is
going to be the Boeing 787-9.
One of the jets was in flight test at
Everett so, with nice weather on a weekend and flying underway, I couldn’t
resist a trip up to get the return. I
was too late for a takeoff shot. The
conditions were great. A cold snap meant
that the air was clear and the sun, while it disappeared for a while shortly
after I arrived, was back in plenty of time for the return. Consequently, as the plane came across the
Cascades, I could see it easily prior to it turning north to come in on the
approach. Mt Baker was clear in the
background as they made the turn to final approach.
The dark colors of the livery make it
necessary to use a bit of shadow slider when processing the shots. It was just after midday so the light was a
bit on the nose of the jet but you could still get something good for the
fuselage sides. The touchdown was a bit
firm providing a smoky cloud of tire rubber.
I wonder how much tread the airline expects to have at delivery? Often the jets will come back for a rejected
takeoff run but this time they went straight back to the ramp.
My last time shooting at SFO, I got
shots of a Virgin Atlantic 787 arriving.
Crossing shots are not unusual at SFO as the jets on approach will often
have departing jets in the background.
The Virgin jet had this. It also
had a second crossing shot a little earlier on the approach. A jet heading over the bay to pick up the
approach further down was directly behind the 787 just after it passed Coyote
Point.
The current generation of wide body
jets are being built at rates that would have been hard to imagine a few years
ago. Fourteen jets a month is so much
more than would have been contemplated before.
That is the sort of build rate that the 787 and the A350 are
achieving. The result is a lot of jets
being in service not that long after the fleet first appeared. Boeing recently built the 787th
787. It was a jet for China Southern and
I got a shot of it returning to Everett.
I’m glad it was an Everett jet rather than a Charleston one. I wonder who got to make that decision!
Ethiopian Airlines has been taking
delivery of some Boeing 777F freighters for their cargo operations. One of the new jets was being readied for
delivery while I was at Paine Field.
Operations were in a northerly direction so, from the terrace on top of
the Future of Flight, we were going to get a good view. I was hoping that a direct flight to Bole in
Ethiopia would be sufficiently long to mean that the jet would be very heavy
with fuel and would run long on take off giving us a good view of
rotation. However, while there was a lot
of fuel on board, the lack of any other payload meant it still got off the
ground pretty swiftly. Still, it was a
good view of the initial climb out.
I was picking up someone from SeaTac
just before Christmas. The flight was
due in just before sunset so I took the camera along just in case. I was out by the outer runway approach path
but the heavies were coming in to the inner runway. This meant they passed nicely in front of Mt
Rainer – assuming you can ignore the 60 odd miles distance to the
mountain. First in was a Condor 767
which still had plenty of evening light on it as it landed.
Next up was a British Airways
777. It arrived as the light was fading
fast. It still had a bit of illumination
but you knew anything following it would be in the gloom. Being winter, there was virtually no
distortion in the atmosphere, which, given the distance was a potential
problem. Things looked pretty sharp in
the final images.
I was in San Francisco for a work
visit a little while back. I was picking
up a rental car so took the shuttle that runs around the terminal areas and
then out to the rental car facility.
This trip gives you a view of the apron areas by each terminal. As you drop away from the central terminal
area, you get a good view back across the ramp area predominantly used by
United but also other Star Alliance carriers.
I grabbed some shots from the shuttle to give an overview of this area
that is otherwise obscured from view.
Hawaiian Airlines had a reasonably
large fleet of 767s for its long haul services.
They introduced A330s to expand the fleet and more recently have added
A321neos to serve destinations on the west coast of the US. The arrival of these planes has meant the
767s are no longer needed. Consequently
the fleet has been run down and the final flights have taken place. It won’t be an Airbus only fleet for the
longer flights for long though. 787-9s
are on order so Boeing will return to the long haul fleet before too long.
A nice early winter sunny day is a pleasant surprise in the Pacific Northwest and I was able to head across to Everett to see what was happening. Boeing is busy building Dreamliners too though and a couple were on test flights while I was there. One was Oman Air. The scheme is an interesting change from the boring white liveries. You can certainly hear the jets as they land because the test flight involves the deployment of the Ram Air Turbine and it buzzes away when they go by. The other arrival will deserve its own post.
