Tag Archives: airliner

San Jose – The New Way to Europe

When you live in the Bay Area, all of the flights to interesting overseas destinations go from SFO. However, there is a lot of demand for these flights and SFO is not the most convenient airport for everyone. Oakland has flights from London and Oslo. The other airport that is fighting for business is San Jose. They have recently added flight by Lufthansa and British Airways. This was enough to drag me down there to see what is moving.

San Jose is not a bad airport to shoot at. There are a few locations which give you good options for getting shots of the jets either arriving or departing. On the day I went, Lufthansa were using their A340 in Star Alliance colors. I have to admit I was a touch disappointed because I wanted a Lufthansa jet in house colors. However, there will be another time. I got there later in the day so didn’t see it arrive. However, I was there for departure.

After it had gone, I headed down to the arrival end. There was going to be a fair bit of time before the BA jet arrived so I would see what showed up. That will probably be another post. Eventually, the BA jet showed up on approach. It came down from the coast side so I could see it from a long way out. It turned on approach and then I got. A bunch of shots of it as it came down the approach. The 787-9 is a better proportioned jet than the 787-8. I think both jets are bigger than they appear. Having not tried either out yet, I don’t know what they are like to fly in. However, the BA colors look nice on it. I got the shot I was after and then headed off. At some point, I shall go for the departure shot too. I should do that before the light gets too low!

Sunset Shooting at SFO

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A holiday weekend combined with an early closure of the office meant I had a bit of time to experiment with some things I wanted to try on the new cameras. Normally I don’t want to blow out a whole evening at a weekend but, with a bit of extra time, I decided to see what I could do with shooting aircraft in sunset and really low light conditions. There will be some other posts that look a how the cameras do in very low light/night conditions. However, to get there, I also got some sunset to play with.

At this time of year, sunset is not as good as it will be later. The sun goes too far north late in the day so, instead of getting good light on the jets, you end up with some backlighting. Even so, there are some good chances to get some more delicate light on the planes. You do get a bit too much contrast as the remaining light is on the nose and the fuselage sides are pretty shady but you can get some reasonable results.

I was interested to see how the camera dealt with the light. The use of exposure compensation becomes a bit variable in these conditions. The light starts to get nicely balanced but then you can end up with more brightness in the background with less on the subject. This can make things go a little dark. I found myself playing with the settings quite a bit as I explored how the camera reacted.

FedEx 757 and Oh So Close

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I have posted before about taking photos from airliners of passing jets and using Flightradar24 and the wifi connection to try and get a shot. On this trip I had two good opportunities that I knew about. The first was a 757 operated by FedEx. I could see it coming using the app. It was apparently not going to be a close pass but it was going to be within range. I saw the jet show up and shot a sequence of it as it came by. The shots were okay given the idea of shooting through windows. A better chance came with an American 737. It was going to be really close to our flight path. Actually, it was really close. Unfortunately, it came right under us. I saw it flash by but I only got shots of engine nacelles and wings of our own jet. Oh so close!

Southwest Evasive Maneuvers

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This was not an aircraft photography trip. I was taking a walk along the shore at Hayward Regional Park. It is a place with lots of wildlife and views across the bay. It is also near the approach to Oakland so I did have the chance to take aircraft pictures if I wanted. That wasn’t the goal though. It didn’t stay that way though. The approach to Oakland involves flying right by Hayward Airport. Hayward has a lot of general aviation traffic. The spam cans are intermixed with some corporate jets.

What caught my eye was the incoming Southwest 737 and a departing Cessna CJ M2. The CJ took off and entered a climbing left turn. This put it into the path of the Southwest 737. I don’t know who was at fault in this. Was the Southwest jet too close, did the CJ pilot break his cleared departure profile or should Hayward tower never let him go? I don’t know. Whatever the reason, they were heading towards each other.

I also don’t know whether the Southwest crew saw the CJ first or if the TCAS gave them a resolution notice. Whatever happened, they took some pretty dramatic avoiding action. I imagine it felt pretty interesting from inside the cabin. They gained good separation and everything was fine. At first I thought they were going to try and get reestablished on the approach but cooler heads prevailed and they cleaned up the jet and went around. After some time to let the heart rate fall, they appeared back on the approach for a more conventional approach. All ended well. I wonder how the conversations went after landing.

Rapid Takeover of the Embraer E175 E1

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The step up in size that Embraer took when they create the E170/175 and E190/195 aircraft was important for them and it proved to be a successful move. Both types did well and have achieved a solid market presence. With a new generation of technologies coming, Embraer decided to go for a significant upgrade to the type with new engines and other systems resulting in the E2 versions. In line with that, they decided to tweak the current design to create the E1 upgrades. This turned out to be a well-timed upgrade as it came at a time when a whole bunch of airlines were looking to up-gauge their regional feeder services. Embraer picked up a ton of orders.

The speed with which these jets have entered the US fleets is impressive. Both United and American signed new deals for service with these jets and now you can regularly see their E175s feeding in to large airports. Alaska has gone a similar way (using Skywest much as United has) and their fleet of E175s is starting to grow. The E2 has now had its first flight in the larger E190 form but the 175 will follow in a few years. The E170 has been dropped from the line at this point. I imagine we will see even more of these jets as they will dominate this seating range which Bombardier seems to have ceded as they focus on larger jets.

The 777-300ER is King

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The gradual demise of the 747 is a topic that I have brought up on here before. The plane that has been the replacement on a number of services is the Boeing 777-300ER. I was hanging out at Coyote Point recently and, while the majority of arrivals were short haul jets and regional jets, there were a lot of long haul arrivals mixed in there. I was surprised to see just how many 777-330ERs were in the mix now. The A380s were also making an appearance but it seems the 300ER really is a dominant force in the long haul market. This is going to change soon with the arrival of its in house replacement as well as the A350 but, for now, it seems the 300ER rules the roost.

Delta’s Rapid Adoption of the 717

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Delta was looking for a replacement for its fleet of DC-9s and, when Southwest took over AirTran and decided to dispose of their fleet of Boeing 717s, Delta was the customer for the jets. At first they were hard to see but it appears that Southwest got rid of them very quickly and Delta did not hang around before getting them painted and configured for their services. Now I see them all over the place.

I first came across them on the east coast but now they are a regular feature of west coast operations. SFO gets a lot of them, as does LAX. I think some of them are running what almost amounts to a shuttle operation between the two airports. The 717 is obviously a DC-9 derivative but the more modern engines give the proportions of the jet a different feel.

Cathay Pacific 747-8F Freighter

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I saw this Cathay Pacific 747-8F making an approach to the opposite side of the airport at LAX while I was waiting for a friend’s flight to arrive. The freighters tend to use the southerly runways since that is where the freight area is located and it cuts down on taxi requirements. Therefore, I wasn’t surprised that it went that way. Later in the day I was up on Imperial Hill when it made its departure. I was actually having something to eat and not really paying attention. It had rotated before I even realized so grabbed the camera quickly to get some shots. I’m glad the camera was close by or I would have been really annoyed.

Cathay Pacific Go-Around

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You don’t see a lot of go-arounds at major airports but they do happen. I was down at LAX awaiting the arrival of a friend when a Cathay Pacific 777 came on to the approach. As I looked back at it, the approach did not appear to be too stable. It seemed to start off a little high, then it got back on glide path but it adopted a rather nose high attitude. At this point I thought something seemed amiss but it then resumed a more normal approach angle and I figured they had got it under control. It was at this time that they powered up and climbed away.

They were tucking up the gear as they came across the top of me. They flew the missed approach procedure and then came around for a second go which went fine this time. I don’t know what the issue was but I did talk to some other pilots that had flown the approach that day and they mentioned that construction work was underway that had meant some of the approach aids were out of service. Maybe this was a factor. Since airlines have strict procedures about going around if they are not stabilized by a certain point, maybe they were just too late getting it back and stable and had to follow the procedure.

Wow (and I Mean That Literally)

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Yes, no exaggeration in this case. It really is Wow! Of course, Wow is an airline, not something so unusual. They are a low cost airline operating out of Iceland and they have started direct flights to San Francisco. I hadn’t managed to see them since they started service. They come in on certain days and later in the afternoon but had not been helped by air traffic delays in Iceland which had meant the flights were arriving late on a regular basis. I did finally get to see one of their A330s come in – late but not as late as had sometimes been the case.

The light at this time of year is not so easy. At the end of the day, the sun angle actually moves sufficiently far around to be on the nose and then even slightly backlit. The late arrival exacerbates the issue but the sun was still slightly on the right side when they came in. It does result in quite some contrast between the nose and the fuselage sides which, with a dark color like they have, makes for a more difficult exposure. I want to visit Iceland at some point so having a direct flight is definitely something to consider for me.