Regular visitors to the blog will know I find the A350 to be the best-looking airliner in production at the moment. During a visit to Heathrow, I got my first look at one of the more recent operators. Air India started taking delivery of jets last year. They have done the decent thing and put a colourful livery on their planes as opposed to the usual mostly white. I am grateful for this as well as for the good light I had when it came in.
The Pakistan Air Force IL-78 showed up at RIAT in 2025 supporting the JF-17 Thunders. Unlike the more recent versions of the IL-76 family, this jet has the original engines. They are a low bypass ratio jet and are not in any way quiet. The high-pitched scream that they produce when idling is really hard on the ears. An occasional bit of fingers jammed in ears was necessary when the angle to the plane made the noise particularly painful, but it was worth it. However, nothing about stills images can convey just how loud these four engines were!
The arrival of the American Airlines retro 777 at Heathrow got me thinking about other liveries that American Airlines has included on its planes. As a result of mergers, there are a lot of legacy airlines that have been engulfed by American over the years. They do reflect this by painting planes in liveries of the older operators. Some of these will probably have shown up on the blog over the years but here is a compilation of different paint jobs on American (and predecessor) planes including variations on their own livery.
I posted a bunch of shots from Heathrow in an earlier post, but I saved this one for its own post. The A380 is a plane some love and some hate. If you have been a passenger on one, you probably love it. It really is a great experience on board. It does seem to make people feel better about themselves that it wasn’t a huge success. Not sure why that happens but people are strange.
I have seen a ton of them over the years, but Etihad was an operator whose fleet I had never photographed until I moved back to the UK. At first this was only from a distance too. When I saw one was coming in a little after the American Airlines special, I decided to wait for it. In an era of white planes, a colourful plane is so welcome, and I find Etihad’s livery very appealing. Here is a great looking jet.
My weekend visit to Heathrow was focused on arrivals but, before I headed home, I did want to check out one more thing. This was not for a lot of photography, but I just wanted to see what the location offered. It was along the south side of the field and would give me a view of departing jets from the south runway. It doesn’t provide much in the way of variety of shot types, but it can provide a dynamic angle on jets just after they have rotated. In nice light, it was a few minutes well spent. Not sure I would spend too long there but it would be good for getting something specific. The fence is a nuisance immediately after getting airborne, but AI tools can do a good job of removing that since I wasn’t up high and the planes are soon clear of the fence line.
When Adobe introduced the reflection removal tool, I was really impressed by its capabilities. I played with a number of shots that I had taken through windows, and they worked out really well. There have been some updates that Adobe has made, and it feels like it isn’t working as well as it should. I was at Glasgow Airport waiting for a flight home and an Emirates A380 was taxiing out so I grabbed a few shots through the glass. There was a really obvious reflection in the sky area of the shot. I figured that the tool would knock it out easily. Instead, it didn’t even recognise it was there. That is the first of these images. I tried a couple of different shots and none of them worked. I wonder what they have done to the tool that has made it struggle here. I ended up making manual selections and using the AI remove tool to try instead. It was okay but not a great result.
The arrival at Heathrow of the American Airlines retro 777 got me out to Heathrow on a sunny weekend. I got there early to make sure I was in a location that worked before the plane arrived and, since the spot I had hoped for worked out, I was there in plenty of time. I also saw that there were a few other interesting aircraft (to me) that were coming in. Consequently, I got to photograph a bunch of planes.
With it being Heathrow, I was going to get a load of British Airways’ A320 family jets. I would probably have not normally cared about A319s, but it won’t be long before you don’t see those again. However, the unusual liveries/airlines that came in were of more interest. My first encounter with an Air India A350 or a Middle Eastern Airlines A321 was great. Other airlines/types I have seen before but maybe not photographed in such nice light. Here is a selection of images from a delightful lunchtime as planes flew by. I did try to stop taking pictures and just enjoy the planes for a while too.
Every once in a while, I post about some change I have made to my processing techniques for my images. I have posted in the past about how I have been using the masking tools in Lightroom to work on images – particularly those with poor lighting conditions where the background and the subject need significantly different edits.
I have recently tweaked my approach to improve it. This involves an extra step to try and get a better selection of the subject and the background. This also addresses some of the issues I find with Lightroom’s selection algorithms. Sometimes it picks things that just don’t make sense. Anyway, I did a full process of an image and recorded the whole thing with my explanation as to why I was doing what I was doing. It is not a short video so only for those with a serious interest. However, if you want to check it out, here it is.
A friend of mine in Fort Worth had shared some images of the latest American Airlines plane to be painted in a special livery. This was a 777-300ER that was aiming to replicate their old paint scheme although it was grey rather than polished aluminium. It is a livery that seems to have divided opinion. I was kind of curious as to whether it would show up in the UK at some point and put a trace on the tail number in case it came to Heathrow.
I hadn’t anticipated that it would get a hit almost immediately. It was scheduled on the DFW to Heathrow run on Sunday. Add to that, the weather was looking great. The only downside is that they were due to be arriving on the north runway, and I had not ever shot there. However, I decided to give it a go. I went a bit early to find out if my plan for where to shoot would work. Parking was a bit of an adventure, but the location was a good one, so I waited and chatted to some guys from Gloucestershire that had turned up for the same reason.
I don’t think it is a great paint job. The red nose does have a bit of a Comic Relief feel about it and grey is fine in good light but will be dull on other days. Then again, I do complain about boring liveries, and this is something else. It also got me out and shooting on a day when otherwise I might not have done so glad it all worked out. I am also told this was its first commercial run post repaint so that is something I suppose!
For as long as I have been going to air shows, the Italian Air Force’s display team, the Frecce Tricolori, has been flying the MB339. I knew that they used to fly the Fiat G91 but that was before my time. I have seen some G91s at museums marked up as Frecce jets but, whether they were actually previously in the team or just painted up in the same way that there are a ridiculous number of Hornets in Blue Angels colours, I didn’t know.
With the team getting ready to transition to the M346 before too long, it was an interesting comparison to have RIAT include a recently restored G91 display in Frecce colours. I think the original team jets has a pointed nose rather than the camera port on the majority of production aircraft, so I doubt this is an original team aircraft, but it is still something special to see. It did fly in formation with the M346 which is a nice before and after idea although not with the current team which would have been even better. Here is a selection of images of it from across the weekend of RIAT.
