Tag Archives: Boeing

Out with the Old and In With the Nui

Sorry for the corny pun but I just couldn’t resist. One of my favorite airliners to shoot has been the Air Tahiti Nui A340-300. I have seen them at LAX on a number of visits. Shooting them taking off on the south complex has been possible on a few occasions and I was super lucky to get one of them landing on the north complex when I was overhead in the helicopter. The A340s are getting a bit old at this point, though, so their replacement has been ordered and it is going to be the Boeing 787-9.

One of the jets was in flight test at Everett so, with nice weather on a weekend and flying underway, I couldn’t resist a trip up to get the return. I was too late for a takeoff shot. The conditions were great. A cold snap meant that the air was clear and the sun, while it disappeared for a while shortly after I arrived, was back in plenty of time for the return. Consequently, as the plane came across the Cascades, I could see it easily prior to it turning north to come in on the approach. Mt Baker was clear in the background as they made the turn to final approach.

The dark colors of the livery make it necessary to use a bit of shadow slider when processing the shots. It was just after midday so the light was a bit on the nose of the jet but you could still get something good for the fuselage sides. The touchdown was a bit firm providing a smoky cloud of tire rubber. I wonder how much tread the airline expects to have at delivery? Often the jets will come back for a rejected takeoff run but this time they went straight back to the ramp.

Virgin Atlantic Multiple Crosses at SFO

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My last time shooting at SFO, I got shots of a Virgin Atlantic 787 arriving. Crossing shots are not unusual at SFO as the jets on approach will often have departing jets in the background. The Virgin jet had this. It also had a second crossing shot a little earlier on the approach. A jet heading over the bay to pick up the approach further down was directly behind the 787 just after it passed Coyote Point.

787th 787

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The current generation of wide body jets are being built at rates that would have been hard to imagine a few years ago. Fourteen jets a month is so much more than would have been contemplated before. That is the sort of build rate that the 787 and the A350 are achieving. The result is a lot of jets being in service not that long after the fleet first appeared. Boeing recently built the 787^th 787. It was a jet for China Southern and I got a shot of it returning to Everett. I’m glad it was an Everett jet rather than a Charleston one. I wonder who got to make that decision!

Direct to Ethiopia is Still Not That Heavy

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Ethiopian Airlines has been taking delivery of some Boeing 777F freighters for their cargo operations. One of the new jets was being readied for delivery while I was at Paine Field. Operations were in a northerly direction so, from the terrace on top of the Future of Flight, we were going to get a good view. I was hoping that a direct flight to Bole in Ethiopia would be sufficiently long to mean that the jet would be very heavy with fuel and would run long on take off giving us a good view of rotation. However, while there was a lot of fuel on board, the lack of any other payload meant it still got off the ground pretty swiftly. Still, it was a good view of the initial climb out.

My Rainier Arrivals

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I was picking up someone from SeaTac just before Christmas. The flight was due in just before sunset so I took the camera along just in case. I was out by the outer runway approach path but the heavies were coming in to the inner runway. This meant they passed nicely in front of Mt Rainer – assuming you can ignore the 60 odd miles distance to the mountain. First in was a Condor 767 which still had plenty of evening light on it as it landed.

Next up was a British Airways 777. It arrived as the light was fading fast. It still had a bit of illumination but you knew anything following it would be in the gloom. Being winter, there was virtually no distortion in the atmosphere, which, given the distance was a potential problem. Things looked pretty sharp in the final images.

Farewell to Hawaiian’s 767s

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Hawaiian Airlines had a reasonably large fleet of 767s for its long haul services. They introduced A330s to expand the fleet and more recently have added A321neos to serve destinations on the west coast of the US. The arrival of these planes has meant the 767s are no longer needed. Consequently the fleet has been run down and the final flights have taken place. It won’t be an Airbus only fleet for the longer flights for long though. 787-9s are on order so Boeing will return to the long haul fleet before too long.

Oh Man! More New 787s

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A nice early winter sunny day is a pleasant surprise in the Pacific Northwest and I was able to head across to Everett to see what was happening. Boeing is busy building Dreamliners too though and a couple were on test flights while I was there. One was Oman Air. The scheme is an interesting change from the boring white liveries. You can certainly hear the jets as they land because the test flight involves the deployment of the Ram Air Turbine and it buzzes away when they go by. The other arrival will deserve its own post.

Gulf Air 787-9

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I caught this Gulf Air 787-9 as it returned from a test flight to Paine Field. It was at the end of the SkyFair event so the crew will have noticed that there were a lot of people on hand to witness their landing. Not a particular problem of course but probably one of the few landings of the Boeing production tests to get a large crowd.

Plenty of 200ERs But the 300ERs Avoid Me

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While I enjoyed my visit to Haneda earlier this year, I was a little frustrated by one thing. Regular readers will know of my interest in trying to capture the articulated gear feature of the 777-300ER. Haneda provided a great opportunity to photograph this as the departing planes were rotating almost directly in front of me. It is also an airport that gets plenty of 777s. Unfortunately, all of the ones that came my way were 200ERs. There were 300ERs departing too but they all went off the parallel runway on the opposite side of the terminal to me. I could only see them once airborne and backlit. Someone in air traffic must have been trying to thwart me!

Tampa Prime Freighters

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I had a short wait at Tampa for a flight home after a work trip. The gate I was waiting at did not have a lot of traffic nearby. Indeed, judging by the total lack of lines at security, maybe none of the gates at Tampa have a lot of traffic! The view from our gate was towards a cargo ramp and there were two 767 freighters loading up. They both finished loading and taxied off while I was there. One was in Amazon Prime colors but the other was unmarked. However, a quick search tells me it is also a Prime jet but I guess they haven’t got around to painting it yet.