Tag Archives: Boeing

P-26 Peashooter

One of my favorites when visiting Chino for the Planes of Fame Airshow is the Boeing P-26 Peashooter. A pre-WWII aircraft, this is the end of a generation of aircraft. Once the war started, aircraft really advanced quickly. For those that had been involved in conflict before the US actually entered the war, the aircraft had already moved on. The P-26 is a bit of a stranger in a time warp. However, the shape and technology combined with the colors make it a curious aircraft for me. Seeing it fly during the twilight show at Chino was cool and the evening light was a lot more impressive than seeing it during the day.

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.

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.

Trying to do Something Different with a Southwest 737

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If you want to go with a rather easily achieved photo, a shot of a Southwest 737 would seem to be about as common as they get in the US. I was staying in a hotel near Midway recently and, after dinner, I decided to see if I could get something a little different to my normal shots of a plane I spend a lot of time sitting inside! I wasn’t hampered by some rather helpful weather conditions.

I was close to the approach path so I wandered off to find what line worked best. My best results came from two spots. One was directly on the flightpath. The other was slightly offset to one side. At this location, the planes are just short of the field so are pretty low. I include a couple of shots that show the rooflines of some of the houses to give you an idea of the surroundings. The shots from under the nose are interesting but there is only so much you get from that angle. I was pleased with a few of the, but I did not spend a lot of time in this spot.

Being offset provided a more interesting angle. I only had one lens with me so I was a little limited in what I could try by having a longer focal length. Being full frame does now give me a bit more width at the short end of the zoom though. Therefore, I could get some shots from almost underneath that provide a slightly more dynamic angle.

Since it was evening, the light was getting better and better. What certainly helped was that there was a hint of storm activity in the distance and some clouds were bubbling up. They made for a far more interesting backdrop than the empty sky. Overall, this was a pretty satisfying evening. I did get some other arrivals that while I was there and I will possibly give them their own post at some time.

National Guard Chinook

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San Carlos Airport is home to the Hiller Aviation Museum. In times past they used to have an event called Vertical Challenge. It was a big gathering of all things rotary winged. Sadly, the challenge ended but the current team is trying to reestablish something similar. They have a smaller gathering called Heli Fest and I went along to shoot with the team for this year’s event. It was a normal day for admissions to the museum but the arrival of a lot of different airframes provided a lot more to see so the visitor numbers were significantly up.

The biggest visitor was a Boeing CH-47F Chinook for the National Guard unit at Stockton. They carried out a few passes before landing. Since the airframe is a little large and has quite a rotor diameter, they shut down on the ramp and were towed in to their parking spot. Once in place, they were open t visitors to come and look through the helicopter and talk to the crew.

No surprise that there was a steady stream of people checking out the Chinook during the course of the day. It is a great looking machine and the crew was busy answering questions throughout the day. When things were wrapping up, they taxied out and took off. A flyby was a necessity prior to going home. The Chinook is a very fast helicopter to the pass was pretty zippy!

: A US Army Boeing CH-47F Chinook taxis out for departure at San Carlos CA.

Pan Am

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Summer of 88 meant I had probably the coolest job someone like me could ever have. My summer break was spent working for the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in the UK. I was involved in noise measuring work around airports in London and the vicinity. I spent a few days inside the fence at Heathrow recording all sorts of things taking off.

I did get some photos while there when it didn’t interfere with making recordings of sound levels. In those days, Pan Am 747s were a regular at Heathrow and here are a couple of their planes heading back across the water. They also had 727s at Heathrow supporting routes to Germany. That was a hangover from the post war split of responsibilities and probably seems anachronistic now.