Tag Archives: civil

And Now It Is Qantas…

I posted here about KLM retiring their 747s early as a result of the COVID-19 related pummeling that the airlines have taken.  It wasn’t long before another airline made the same announcement – this time it was Qantas.  Qantas has operated the 747s since the beginning and it is quite a shame to see that they are no more.  Here are some of my Qantas 747s from over the years.  I should note that there is a rumor that they may not be gone for good and could return.  That would be great but I suspect it will not be the case given that they didn’t have long left anyway and things are going to be rough for a while for the airlines in all probability.

Video of Haneda in the Rain

I posted some shots of the jets at Haneda reversing thrust and throwing up a lot of spray in the process as a result of the rain that day.  Stills can be good for showing off spray but the motion of the spray in the reverser flows is more apparent in video.  Consequently, I shot a bunch of video that day.  Only recently have I caught up with my video editing backlog courtesy of the ample time I have at home as a result of not being able to go out anywhere.  Here is a sample of the airliner movements from that day.

 

 

Air to Air With United Jets – Or Is It?

When putting together some images for a group online that I am involved with, a dug out a couple of shots of jets departing O’Hare I shot years back.  When coming off 22L, some of the jets make an early turn to the south and you can get a view of them that is either quite level with the wing line or slightly above.  When shooting them, they are climbing so it is obvious what you were shooting.  However, as I looked at these shots, it occurred to me that they looked a lot like an air to air position except the angles were wrong because of the climb.  Since I had shot quite tightly, re-cropping the shot required some Photoshop work.

Taking the image out of Lightroom and in to Photoshop, I selected the crop tool and rotated the image to be the sort of angle that an air to air shot might be.  Doing this crops off the nose and tail of the jet.  However, one feature of the crop tool in Photoshop is that, if you then drag the edges of the tool back out, you can expand the canvas size.  You now have the whole plane in shot but have added some white space in each corner where no image previously existed.

It is a simple task to then use Content Aware Fill to add sky back in to these areas.  The result is a shot that looks almost as if you had been flying in formation at altitude.  Would you have spotted it?  Having done it with an A320, I then had a go with a 757.  The light angle makes it look a bit like we are flying along towards a setting sun.  I was rather pleased with the trick.

Another Star Wars Jet – At Last

When a new Star Wars movie is released, it seems to be the thing to arrange a tie in with an airline and have them paint jets in special Star Wars themed liveries.  ANA was a part of this and I have shot a variety of their special paint scheme jets which you can see here and here.  For the most recent movie, The Rise of Skywalker, United got in on the game and painted a 737 in a black livery with special marking including one side with a blue lightsaber and one with a red.  I had not seen the jet before.  It has been to SeaTac a few times but never when I could get there (or when it was daylight).  Finally it showed up one evening when the weather was great so nice light.  Only one side to see of course but here it is!

Finally the Boeing T-38s Are In the Sun

I mentioned the arrival of some USAF T-38s in this post.  They weren’t alone, though.  Boeing had both of their T-38 chase jets out on missions and they had to come back at some point.  The day had lovely weather so I was going to wait around and get on with some work to see when they showed up.  The jets have similar paint schemes but are slightly different in detail.  I had shot one of them in nice conditions once so was keen to do better.  I got both of them as they returned so finally felt like I had some success.

I wonder how long they will last.  Since Boeing has won the contest to replace the T-38 in USAF service, I wonder whether the early T-7 jets they built will find their way to Boeing Field at some point to support flight test activities.  They will probably not be a match for production jets so would be of less use for in service test activities.  We shall see.  The T-33s are still around so the T-38s may have years ahead of them.

Flight Check Lear 60 Maneuvering Around BFI

I was driving over to Seattle a while back and, as I crossed the I-90 floating bridge, I saw a Learjet maneuvering at low level around the hill ahead of me.  I decided to see what was going on since I suspected this might be an FAA jet flying a variety of approaches.  Sure enough, it was one of their Lear 60s.  I have seen them on a number of occasions before at different airports.  Tracking them on something like FlightRadar24, it is easy to work out what they are since they fly a tone of patterns around an airport normally dealing with simple arrivals and departures.

Boeing Field is not such an airport as it has a lot of training activity but the Lear is a bit faster than the average piston single.  I didn’t know how long it had been there so it could have gone before I arrived but they still had a few circuits to do before they were finished.  These involved a different sequence of approaches from offset positions from which they could take their measurements and then break off to do it again.  It is interesting to see a business jet being thrown around like this in a way that would not keep the average customer happy!

Farewell KLM 747s

The massive reductions in air service as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has put airlines in a tough spot.  One of the first things they have done is ground a significant portion of their fleets.  For some airlines with types that were due to go out of service before too long anyway, this just accelerated the plans.  The KLM 747s were due to last until 2021 but they have been grounded and are not expected to return.  As I have done with the end of 747 operations for other airlines in the past, this is a small tribute to the KLM 747 fleet.  An interesting livery amongst a world of white jets.

GOL 737

The nice thing about living near an airliner factory is seeing airline color schemes that you would never normally be even close to.  The 737 line has recently been idled but they are still finishing off some testing of jets and this GOL Max shot an approach at Paine Field one weekend while I was there.  Quite an attractive livery I think.

Busy American Terminals

It’s been a little while since my last trip to Dallas but I did come across some other shots from when I was coming home through DFW.  As one of the hubs for American Airlines, the majority of the gates seem to have American jets on them.  The variety of types is decreasing with the MD-80s in their last throws while I was there.  I like the longer shot you can sometimes get from the connector between the terminals which bunches up the jets.  When they are all one type it isn’t so interesting but a collection of different fins is good if you can get it comparing the size of the narrow bodies and the widebodies.

777-300 But No ER

Japan is one of the places where it is easy to find a Boeing 777-300.  The 777-200 sold in good numbers and Boeing stretched the airframe to create the -300.  It was not a big seller but was picked up in the Asian market where capacity was important but range was not such a concern.  When Boeing launched the 777-300ER, they unlocked the range and payload capabilities that were in demand and it sold very well – usurping the 747 as the long range high capacity jet of choice.

The -300 has been retired from some of its original operators but Japan Air Lines still flies them.  They are most easily identified by the original wingtip shape as opposed to the rake tip that the 300ER has.  They also have the original engine choices as opposed to the GE-90 only 300ER.  I saw some at Haneda and grabbed some shots.  With the A350s joint the JAL fleet, I wonder whether the 777-300s will soon be heading to the yard.