Tag Archives: Boeing

Cloudy Arrivals for the Family

I was picking up some family members that were coming to stay. I got to the airport a little ahead of their scheduled arrival time and, since it was some time near an airport, I figured a bit of photography wouldn’t go amiss. They were coming in on a Virgin 787-9 so I knew I would shoot that. The heavies come in on the inner runway, but the rest tend to go to the outer. You can still get them, but it isn’t so close. I figured a few shots on a cloudy day was worth time to experiment with exposing high and playing with the shots in post.

BOAC and the Red Arrows

Leave a Reply

RIAT is known for special formations and British Airways has been part of them in the past. Concorde with the Red Arrows and an A380 with the Red Arrows spring to mind. For 2019 and BA’s 100^th anniversary, they wanted to do something special. The focal point was to be the BOAC liveried 747-400. I shot this jet at SeaTac and covered it in this post. To see it in formation with the Red Arrows sounded pretty good. They put together two passes.

The first was from the right and involved a gentle turn in the direction of the crowd to give a slightly topside view of things. This was nice but the distance involved did mean there was a bit of heat haze to combat. The second pass in the other direction was a more straight pass along the display axis. The sun was popping in and out during this time so the colors popped sometimes and not others. It made for some tricky shooting but it still looked pretty good and it was nice to just watch when not shooting.

Four 777Xs On the Ramp

Leave a Reply

The 777X initial airframe has already made it on the blog when it was parked on the ramp and when it undertook some taxi trials. It has since had the dodgy engines removed and I assume some more trustworthy examples are on their way. First flight will not be this year, though, based on what I am reading in the press. While the start of flying has not been achieved, production has continued. The initial customer aircraft have also now shown up. I understand that Lufthansa will be receiving at least one of these jets. The flight line now has four jets parked up – two in house colors and two all white. Hope we will see them up and active before too long! I hear a fifth came out with Emirates’ wing tips just after I took this! I have another primer one since which is below.

747s Might Be Fading But Thai Is Still Playing

Leave a Reply

The passenger 747 fleet is something that is shrinking fast. US operators have retired theirs but other operators still have fleets in use, some of which (like British Airways) are still fairly large. However, they are definitely not as common a sight as they used to be and seeing one from a different operator is a nice surprise. At Haneda I saw a couple of operators. A Qantas jet was parked on the far side of the field and, while visible, wasn’t much of a shot. However, a Thai Airways jet was on the gate when I arrived so it seemed like there was a fair chance it would move before I overheated and gave up.

It took a while but eventually it did push back and taxi for the runway I was watching. It then sat at the hold for what seemed like a ridiculously long time. It probably wasn’t that long but I was wilting in the heat and begging it to move. Finally it did line up and got off the ground pretty quickly. I guess the run to Thailand is not a long one so it wouldn’t have been very heavy. I wonder whether I shall ever see one of these again?

Korean Air’s Last 777

Leave a Reply

I’ve seen a few Korean Air 777s on test at Everett since we moved here. This one was heading out on a delivery flight on a Friday evening. The only reason it gets a post is that, from what I can discover, this is the last 777 that Korean Air has on order. They have a bunch of 787s to come in the coming years but this is their last 777-300ER. They haven’t ordered the 777X (which, given how many different widebody types they operate, is quite a surprise!).

Clippers Bashing the Circuit

Leave a Reply

A visit from my buddy Paul was a good reason for a day off and a trip to Whidbey Island. We had some ideas about what we wanted to see but anything was going to be good. The weather was nice so we were in luck. One thing we got a lot of that I was not expecting was C-40 Clipper traffic. Two of the jets were out and about. They weren’t just moving people around though. They were clearly getting some training in as they flew pattern work for a long time. We were able to get shots of them multiple times.

FedEx Testing and Delivery

Leave a Reply

Summer evenings can be a good time to visit Paine Field as flying seems to be busy and the light is often quite nice. On two separate visits, I saw this FedEx 777F flying. The first time it was on some acceptance flights and it flew an approach followed by a low go around. The gear doors had been blown down prior to this approach and the RAT was deployed. It then flew a pattern and landed.

Next time I saw it, it was heading off to Memphis on its delivery flight. They seemed to have a few issues with the transponder prior to departure which was fine for me as it delayed them until the light was a bit nicer. Not sure I would be so happy to take my new plane with a snag though! Memphis when empty is a piece of cake for a 777F so it made it off the ground pretty speedily.

Talk to Me Goose – Oh That’s Right, You Can’t

Leave a Reply

Top Gun 2 is in production at the moment. There has been much activity around the Super Hornets on the west coast and their involvement in the film with one jet getting photographed a bit in Pete Mitchell’s colors. What I didn’t know was that the production has been on the road. While up at Whidbey Island we saw a Super Bug launching towards us. Based Growlers are of interest and Super Bugs less so but we still shot it. As it got closer, it was clearly painted up differently and we realized we had Maverick’s plane in frame. It flew a straight out departure and we didn’t see it return before we left but it was kind of a pleasant surprise to get it at all!

Collings Foundation at BFI

Leave a Reply

The Collings Foundation made its annual visit to the Seattle area recently including flights from Boeing Field. The weather had been rather uninspiring but I figured I would head along and hope for some gaps in the clouds. The Mustang and the P-40 didn’t fly while I was there. The B-24 and the B-17 did though. Sadly, the B-24 only flew once. The discussion was whether Seattle being a Boeing town meant that everyone wanted to fly on the B-17, despite the rarity of the B-24. The clouds had a habit of parting at just the wrong time and place with good light up the approach and down the runway but not where I wanted it to be. Even so, it was still nice to see these vintage planes again.

777X Taxi Trials

Leave a Reply

I had a lucky break one evening when I headed up to Paine Field for one thing, only to discover that the 777-9 development airframe was undergoing taxi tests. I got there to see it on the Boeing ramp with cooling fans running to cools the brakes. I was worried that I may have missed all of the action but this was not the case. They had two more taxi trials that they ran before wrapping up. Each time they would have a brake cooling session with the fans.

The engines are a problem at the moment so they don’t have a flight clearance. That means that the taxi trials will not get too fast. High speed taxi trials require a flight clearance to be available should the aircraft get airborne by accident. These were not going to do anything like that so no lifting the nose wheel. Just accelerate down the runway, gather data points and apply the brakes. I wrote a piece for GAR which is here that covered the trial and there is some video below which includes a head on view of the folding wingtips being lowered into the flight position.