Tag Archives: airliner

Yet More Head On

I had another trip to SFO to go shooting with my friend Hayman. We shot at a couple of locations and ended up at the spot I have tried shooting head on before. Not a huge amount of traffic and they varied which runway was used. Heat haze was a bit of a problem but still got some variations on what I had been seen before.

I was shooting with a zoom rather than a prime which meant I tried some vertical format stuff as the planes climbed away from the runway. There were also a few shots of paired departures off the cross runways to go with as well. A helicopter even got into the mix!

Another go at the 777-300ER wheels

Leave a Reply

I have been trying to get evidence of a feature of the Boeing 777-300ER for many years. I previously posted on my efforts to get shots that showed the effect where the main gear bogie is locked to allow the aircraft to get a higher rotation angle at take-off. I have since had another go at this. Taking pictures during the winter has helped since the heat haze is a lot less obvious. Even so, the aircraft are usually quite a distance away. This time I managed to get a sequence that seems to show the effect quite well.

I also had a go at doing the same thing from head on. Not quite as clear cut but you can see some of what is happening.

Jet Airways/Etihad

Leave a Reply

This one caught me out. I was at SFO getting some shots when I heard Etihad call up on the tower frequency. I didn’t realize that Etihad flew to SFO and then saw the plane was a Jet Airways 777-300ER – an Indian airline. I was a bit confused by all of this so took some shots thinking it was something unusual going on. Turns out it is not unusual. Etihad have leased some jets from Jet Airways to allow them to add service while they are short on jets of their own. This was one of those jets.

End of the Brasilia?

Leave a Reply

“You don’t know what you’ve lost ‘til it’s gone” as the song goes. These days a number of aircraft types are fading away and the previous lack of interest shown when they were commonplace gets replaced with a sudden wish to make the most of their final days. One type that is likely to be disappearing from the skies around here before too long is the Embraer EMB120 Brasilia.

It isn’t disappearing in total but the largest operator of the type around here is Skywest. Skywest uses the Brasilia for their services and for those of United Express. However, the relatively small capacity of the type is making them uneconomical to operate – something the age of the airframes is probably not helping. I think I have only flown on one a couple of times when I was connecting on Comair from Cincinnati to Greenville-Spartanburg (and back) in 1990. I recall it being a rather noisy beast inside.

As Skywest draws down their fleet, they will soon be gone. Ahead of that time, here are a few shots I have gathered over the years.

More Head On at SFO

Leave a Reply

After my visit to the Peninsula was done, I decided to head back to SFO. This time I wanted to have another go at head on shots. In my post here, you can read about my first efforts at this and how the heat haze was a problem. Winter has better chances since the sun is lower and the heat haze reduced. However, the sun does go down earlier so there are fewer flights departing while you can still shoot. They do tend to have nicer light though.

The Emirates and Lufthansa A380s were the main things I got while I was there. A British Airways 747 was scheduled out but the sun was dropping out of sight as he taxied so I didn’t wait. He actually took off over me while I was at the gas station. He had nice light once up high but the runway would have been in shade by then so I don’t think it was a mistake.

I also got some corporate and rotary wing movements while I was waiting. Unlike last time, the 01s are now back in use so only the heavies departed my way. It was fun to look back up the approach at some parallel arrivals and also to see the departing jets as they crossed in front of me.

SFO from the Bay

Leave a Reply

While not a specific trip to shoot planes at SFO, I did have some time by the bay to get some shots of the planes as a result of being on the peninsula for another purpose. It was earlier on a Saturday morning that I found myself there. Winter is a better time to shoot at SFO since the heat haze is less of an issue. Even so, I was surprised to see how much haze there was for shots that were looking back towards the approach. I’m not sure if this was a result of the tide being too far out exposing the mud flats or not. The angle of the light early is also a bit far back but still there were some options.

I was pleasantly surprised by my luck while I was there. Despite there not being too much traffic, I had a couple of parallel approaches take place. One was a China Eastern A330 with a United A320 in close contact. This was a very cool thing to see. A couple of United A319s also were quite close together on another approach but they had just slightly more offset.

BAe 146 Demonstration at LCY

Leave a Reply

In my youth I had one of the coolest jobs I have ever had. I spent a summer working for the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in London as part of their noise measuring unit. I spent a lot of time traveling to various different airfields to make noise measurements of the air traffic. I often took a camera along with me on these jaunts.

One trip was some weekend working – overtime! At that time, London City Airport was relatively new and was a turboprop only airport being served by Dash 7s, principally of Brymon Airways. Very different from its current role, it was still a relatively new airport with a shorter runway. There was a lot of interest in adding jet service to the airport with the BAe146 seen as the type that could meet the requirements of the glideslope as well as concerns about noise. This is where we come in!

A demonstration was set up one weekend with a couple of 146s operating from the airport. We were there to take some noise readings to compare them to the turboprops. (As an aside, I felt the noise from the Dash 7s was far more intrusive, even if the readings were actually lower than for the jets.) We went along with our noise measuring gear and took a bunch of readings. There was a period during the day when the flying wasn’t taking place and we were allowed to go to the airport to get fed. Since we had CAA passes, we also got to head on to the ramp.

These shots are what I got that day. Nothing too impressive as tends to be the case for my old stuff. The original scans showed up a lot of damage to the negatives which required much time in Photoshop to take out the worst of it. Still not the cleanest of images but a day that won’t be repeated which is enough to justify a post and a chance to share an old experience.

Straight Down the Runway

Leave a Reply

One of the things I have been contemplating for a while is getting some shots at SFO from straight down the runway. I have been to other locations and blogged about them here and here. However, I wanted to try a view that included the runway itself. With a day free to play, I decided to explore the options.

I ended up with a spot that was reasonable. It isn’t perfect with fences and lights in the way to some extent. A parking lot between me and the runway has the double effect of being visually intrusive and also providing lots of heat haze. In truth, heat haze was a big problem while I was there. This was something I had anticipated being an issue. However, I was more interested in understanding the possibilities there so I could come back at a different time of year when heat haze is less of an issue.

Even so, as the sun got lower, the problem did reduce a lot and, of course, the lighting got a lot nicer. I am thinking a visit when the timing of the departure peak combines with the lighting is going to be in order.

One other thing that will change is that my visit occurred during the time in the summer when SFO was working on two runways and all operations were on the 28 runways. That meant I had a lot more departures coming my way than will be the case when the 01 runways are taking the majority of the departure traffic.

A380 Row

Leave a Reply

I was on a flight home that stopped in LAX en route. I hadn’t planned anything for where I was sitting but we happened to land on the south side of the field and, being Southwest, the terminal was on the north side which meant traversing the field. This took us past the Bradley International Terminal. It was quite full as we passed with plenty of heavies. It had taken on a bit of an A380 theme so I grabbed the phone and got a few shots as we came by. Phone pictures through an airplane window may not be the best but it was what was to hand and they were hardly arranged for a great image anyway. If you like to see big planes from around the world, this will be for you. There are a couple of other visitors to LAX that day below. If not, come back in a couple of days and see if I have something better for you.

Hawaiian Airbus and Friends

Leave a Reply

While waiting to get the shot of the Janet flight I posted about previously, there were plenty of other departures from McCarran. The majority of flights were coming out on the westerly runway rather than the one the Janets use so we were not getting the nice topside view of them turning. However, the light was very nice and so a few of them provided interesting targets. The Hawaiian Airbus A330 looked particularly nice but most looked good on those conditions. We were a bit focused on finding out how the Janet was doing so didn’t give them our full attention but some looked too good to ignore.