Not long ago, I posted about seeing an Avanti for the first time in a while. The lack of Avantis having been broken, I have seen a couple more. I saw that one had come in to Boeing Field and I was there before it fired up for its next flight. It taxied out on the opposite side of the field and then took off to the northeast.
A short while later, I saw a silhouette of a plane on approach and looked closer to see what it was. It looked pretty like an Avanti so I figured it was the same aircraft returning for some reason. I was a bit bothered that something might be wrong but happy to get another chance to shoot it. As it got closer thought, it was clearly not in the same paint scheme. Instead, it turned out to be a Canadian registered example and a pretty nice looking one at that.
Getting two Avantis within a short space of time was an outcome I was pretty pleased with. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hang around to get the departure of the second example.
I had a couple of encounters with the same jet while it was on test. (It’s brake dust already showed up in this post.) This 787-9 is, by now, part of the Korean Air fleet. I saw it depart from Paine Field one evening in pleasant light. The low sun angle really brought out the shape of the underside of the wing in a way that normally you just don’t get to appreciate. It showed up a second time while I was out to get the farewell flight of the Delta 747 which I wrote about here. It came in at a similar time and the wet weather helped to make the pale blue color scheme pop a bit more.
Substitutions on the Seattle route are not just limited to Lufthansa. Virgin Atlantic has been flying the route with the 787-9 but, as with a lot of the Rolls Dreamliner operators, Virgin has been suffering from engine shortages while the blade cracking problems are dealt with. They have brought the A340-600 on to the route in the interim. I thought I wouldn’t be seeing these again after the last examples at SFO I saw but I got another chance. Not great light but it was good to see one more time.
Lufthansa have painted up one of their 747-8I jets in a livery that is based on their old color scheme. Until recently, the Seattle route was being flown with a 747-400 so I didn’t anticipate the chance to see it. Then, in the aftermath of the Air Berlin bankruptcy, Lufthansa deployed some 747s on domestic services to bolster capacity. This meant some 747-400s were pulled from routes and the 747-8I was subbed on to Seattle. I was down there on a crummy day to get the IL-76 and the special jet was due in. I figured I couldn’t miss it, even if the conditions weren’t great. The light was not great as it came down the approach but the shot from behind as it got to the threshold was a bit better.
I missed the best of this event. I got to Everett towards the end of a filming session with a Gulfstream G650ER jet. An Astar was being used to film the jet as it flew some approaches. I had actually noticed the jet online earlier in the day because it had been flying orbits over some of the islands and showed up on FlightRadar24. I didn’t know what it was at the time but, once I got to Everett it all became clear. I didn’t get anything of the Astar as I didn’t have the camera out when I first arrived but I did get a shot or two of the Gulfstream near the end of the flights. Looked like a fun sortie to be involved with.
Boeing announced the sale of a couple of 747-8F freighters to Qatar Cargo and then immediately delivered one of them. I was confused at the time as I thought it would be a while before the deliveries took place, but it turned out that they had sold a couple of jets that had been previously built but had not been delivered. The second of the jets was recently in flight test. This jet is quite well known as Boeing had painted it up in Seattle Seahawks colors for a Super Bowl appearance and then for a few follow up flights. Now it has been repainted and, when I shot it one weekend afternoon, it was close to being ready for delivery.
Alaska’s cargo operation has used 737-400 freighters for a while. They are now the launch customer for a cargo conversion of the 737-700. I read about them taking delivery of the first aircraft but wasn’t too focused on seeing one. I almost ignored this departure since SeaTac has a steady stream of Alaska 737s. I did decide to shoot it though when something about it looked different. Sure enough, it was the cargo conversion. A lack of windows and the cargo markings set it apart.
This Korean Air 787-9 Dreamliner is seen taking off one Saturday afternoon from Paine Field on a production flight test. It was lightly loaded so it was off the ground pretty rapidly and was already cleaning up the gear as it came toward me. The wheels are braked before the gear comes up to stop them spinning before they enter the bay. This can result in a burst of brake dust that blows clear in the slipstream and the shadow of the brake dust showed up clearly. As they continued the climb out, they actually lowered the gear again. I think this was to cool the brakes given they had done a high-speed taxi run prior to the takeoff.
Night photo shoots are becoming more popular these days. The Flying Heritage Combat Armor Museum (FHCAM) held one with the de Havilland Mosquito. The evening started out with the plane on the ramp when people were free to wander around the aircraft. I was shooting a lot of long exposures using the tripod which does a good job of removing the people provided they keep moving. However, a few people were hanging around for long periods so they show up in the shots. Others were using the flashes on their cameras or flashlights to look at stuff which made things blow out.
Once we were all cleared from the ramp, one of the FHCAM crew came out to talk about the aircraft. He was the one that would carry out the engine runs and he ran through the test procedures that would be followed for the engines. People had the chance to ask questions and get a good understanding of the plane and how it is operated.
Then came the fun. The engines were fired up in sequence. Then they were run through the test program. The blue flame from the exhaust stacks could be clearly seen in the very dark conditions. When the mag checks were carried out, the flames were even more conspicuous. I moved around a bit to get some different positions. I was quite surprised to see how blurred some of the shots were. The aircraft clearly moves a lot despite being chocked and so some of the shots were totally unusable. This was a lesson learned. In future I would focus on shortening the exposure times a lot to minimize this issue which I hadn’t anticipated.
I also shot a bunch of video while the runs were underway. The edited video is below. It was a fun evening and thanks to FHCAM for holding it. It would be fun to do on another type. It might be nice to have a touch more light on the ramp but the dark conditions did have some advantages. I discovered a bit about shooting in that environment which should hopefully help on future night shoots.
Since moving to Seattle, I have seen an airline that I had never heard of before Xiamen Airlines is a Chinese airline but their livery looks a lot like Kuwait Airlines and that was what I initially thought it was when I first saw one. Since then I have seen a few in the air and now recognize them. It’s not the most exciting scheme in service but I guess I recognize it now so that must have some value.
Not long ago, I posted about seeing an Avanti for the first time in a while. The lack of Avantis having been broken, I have seen a couple more. I saw that one had come in to Boeing Field and I was there before it fired up for its next flight. It taxied out on the opposite side of the field and then took off to the northeast.
A short while later, I saw a silhouette of a plane on approach and looked closer to see what it was. It looked pretty like an Avanti so I figured it was the same aircraft returning for some reason. I was a bit bothered that something might be wrong but happy to get another chance to shoot it. As it got closer thought, it was clearly not in the same paint scheme. Instead, it turned out to be a Canadian registered example and a pretty nice looking one at that.
Getting two Avantis within a short space of time was an outcome I was pretty pleased with. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hang around to get the departure of the second example.
