Tag Archives: airliner

One of My Better Encounters with the Dreamlifter

I have had some mixed luck with the Dreamlifter. Light failing at the wrong moment or the sun setting just before departure are two examples. On this occasion, though, things worked out pretty well for me. I was visiting Future of Flight so I was on their viewing deck when the jet departed. I watched them start up (including some nice puffs of smoke as fuel and oil burned off at ignition) but they were partly obscured by a hangar.

Pushback made everything easier and they then taxied right towards me. It is true that you are looking into the sun at this point but it was still not a problem to get shots of the plane without a problem. They taxied out past the parked IL-76 and then held in front of us for a moment. The wind was good for northerly departures so they taxied across the threshold and then down Alpha to the other end of Paine Field.

Take off had to wait for a couple of Cessnas and then they lined up and headed our way. I was definitely not alone on the viewing terrace at this point! Little areas of snow alongside the runway were apparent when the outboard engines disturbed them. Then they were rotating and climbing towards us. Finally I got some decent conditions for some shots. Now, I guess, this will happen a lot and I will wonder why I ever was bothered about not shooting the jet in nice light.

LAX is Attracting the Neos

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The A320neo (and more recently the A321neo) has been a big seller for Airbus. However, introduction has not been smooth with both of the engine suppliers struggling to meet their commitments for powerplants (Pratt and Whitney definitely having the worse time of it). Despite this, the neos are turning up in service in a lot of places but I had not seen a lot of them. My trip to LAX changed that a bit.

Here I got to see a few operators with the neos in service. The far larger fan diameter of the new generation engines makes the neos reasonably easy to spot and I like a big high bypass engine so I appreciate the change. It won’t be too long before they are around in huge numbers and won’t be worthy of comment but, on this trip, I was pleased to see so many.

Qantas Celebrates Aborigine Art Again

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Qantas has decorated previous aircraft with liveries that encompass aborigine art. Their Wunala Dreaming aircraft was well known around the world and, in an age when airline liveries tend to be rather bland, these colorful jets are a welcome change. They have taken a similar route with one of their new Boeing 787-9s and I saw it at Paine Field during test flying. It came in from the south and executed a go around from relatively low level.

Then they caught me out by heading north to turn and make an approach from the opposite direction. This required some rather swift repositioning by me. In fact, I got to the parking lot as they were on final approach and, rather than park, I just pulled to the side, ran up the bank, grabbed the shot and then got back in the car to park properly. It was tight but it worked out okay.

Most West Coast??

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The merger of the Virgin America operations into Alaska Airlines means combining the Airbus fleet with the Boeings. Virgin America had ordered some A321neos and these are in the process of delivery just as things are being merged. Alaska chose to change the livery on the next one off the line and adopted a scheme designed to reflect the number of flights they now operate on the west coast. The Most West Coast jet has not been popular since it seems to lack branding of either airline. It was at the gate when I landed in LA and I saw it taxiing out later that morning. I wonder how long it will last in this form?

Wamos – A New Airline for Me

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There are many airlines around the world so plenty that you probably haven’t heard of and may never see. Finding one in your backyard is a surprise though. There I was hovering over LAX in a Robinson shooting pictures of the arriving and departing jets and a 747-400 appears on the approach. Since they are becoming fewer and further between these days, this was a good thing. When I saw the name on it, I had no idea what it was.

Wamos is apparently a Spanish airline. They have been operating some flights to LA but, up until this point (and the subsequent research I did), I had never heard of them. I guess we just never crossed paths. A new airline and a 747 was a pretty sweet combination. I was definitely on a roll on this flight as I got a number of treats.

Wingtip Treatments

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Richard Whitcomb was an aerodynamicist at NASA who pioneered a number of technologies that benefit the aviation world today. One of those was his development of winglets. These are the wingtip treatments that improve lift to drag ratio and climb performance without significantly extending the wing. While his work was clear, it took a while for them to be implemented widely. Now, most aircraft involve some sort of wingtip extension. However, the first aircraft to replicate his design approach was the MD-11.

The MD-11 had a split winglet with a larger extension upwards and a smaller one downwards. This reflected some of Whitcomb’s original drawings. Strangely, after this, the focus was on upward winglets only (although the Airbus approach for a while was what they called a fence on the wingtip which was something more in keeping with the Whitcomb approach). Recently, there has been a return to the original with APB introducing the Split Scimitar and Boeing producing their own Split Winglet design (not as elegant as the APB approach in my mind.

Most airliners and many business jets now incorporate a tweaked wing tip configuration. Maximizing the aerodynamic performance requires squeezing as much as you can out of the design within the space constraints you have. The following pictures are examples of the different types used.

Tahiti Nui Comes Up Trumps

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A favorite airline of mine is Air Tahiti Nui. I have never flown with them but they have a colorful livery and they still fly Airbus A340-300s so they get points from me on two fronts. The only place I ever get to see them is at LAX. Normally they operate off the southern runway complex and I saw a couple on the ground while I was there on a recent trip. While I was doing my flight over the airport to photograph operations, I knew the timing was right for one of their flights to come in. However, things were pretty busy that day and we were reluctant to move over to the southside to get them arriving as we feared we might not get back into the center area to shoot arrivals on the northside again.

I was resigned to not getting them when my lucked took a very positive turn. For some reason, and I don’t know what it was, the controllers brought them in to the north runways. They came to me! I didn’t have to do anything to reposition and I hadn’t even been aware at first that they were coming that side. Needless to say, when they appeared on final, I was pretty stoked. I imagine these jets will be replaced before too long so I was delighted to get these shots of them airborne.

BB-8 to Add to the ANA Star Wars Collection

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Back when we lived in California, I saw the Star Wars 787 from All Nippon come in to San Jose. That is the topic of this blog post. There are a couple of other Star Wars planes that ANA painted up. One is a 767 and it tends to fly around Asia so I doubt I will get a chance to see it any time soon. The other was a 777-330ER painted up like BB-8. I few of my friends have seen it come in to Chicago but I had not seen it up close. They didn’t operate in to where I was. (I had shot it overflying me at high altitude once though.)

Then I caught a break. I didn’t realize this at the time but it was operating to Los Angeles the day I was shooting over the airport. I knew an ANA 777 was on its way in but I had not paid too much attention to which aircraft it was. As I was hanging over the airport, I picked the jet out of the murky skies as it came down the approach and, as it got closer, I realized which jet it was. I have to admit, I was rather surprised and a bit excited when I saw it.

The Chase is On!

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Sometimes you find yourself in a position that yields a shot that you hadn’t anticipated. Normally shooting stuff over a long distance doesn’t do much for you because atmospheric distortion means the shots are of no use. However, sometimes the conditions are clear and things show up better. In this case I was shooting some jets on final to SeaTac. The position meant I had a good view of jets that were climbing out on departure. The departure path from SeaTac to the south is straight for a long time so you could get two or three jets climbing out in sequence. In this shot I got the three of them.

Boomer Position in a 747

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If you think of aerial refueling tankers, the Boeing 747 is not going to be the first plane that jumps to mind. However, a tanker version of the 747 was developed and is in service to this day in Iran. I haven’t seen one of those planes but, before they were built, Boeing undertook testing of the configuration on their testbed, the original 747 prototype. This is on display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. When we were walking through the fuselage, we got to the read and found the boomer station. Apparently, it was not removed after installation. It looks remarkably similar to that from a KC-135 so I guess they ported the design across rather than come up with something significantly different.