Tag Archives: jet

National Geographic/Icelandair 757

One weekend, I saw an early arrival of an Icelandair 757 was scheduled for Boeing Field. The weather was not looking great but it was an unusual arrival and I didn’t have any competing things top do so I went across. Icelandair has some charter aircraft and this one turned out to be one of those. I have shot the Abercrombie and Kent jet before. This is a high end tourist operation that takes people from exotic location to exotic location. On this occasion, it was something similar. This time the operation was National Geographic. When I saw the plane, I was quite surprised but not so much that I could grab a few shots!

Blue Angels Super Bugs Get To Seattle

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I was at Boeing Field for the arrival of the Blue Angels for Seafair. It was a work day so I was sitting in the car and actually presenting to some colleagues via a Teams call. My presentation was underway as they were getting close but it was almost done. I was hoping that it would all wrap up before they got there. Sadly, I was wrong. I was on the final section of the presentation when they flew overhead in Delta formation. I was shut in the car but still had to explain why it had suddenly got so loud at my end.

Fortunately, that was the end of the meeting and I was able to get out of the car in time for the arrival of the individual jets for landing. I did get to see the Delta arrival again later in the weekend but I am not sure whether it is my imagination or not but it seemed lower and closer on that first occasion when I was sitting in the car with no camera.

The F-16XL That Most People Ignored

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There was a grey camo F-16 on the ramp at the air show at Edwards this year. When I saw it I was really excited but I think I was in the minority. I mentioned to a photographer next to me how cool it was and he commented on the air data boom. I told him it was an F-16XL and he had no idea what that was. The XL was the long range strike version of the F-16 that went up against and lost to the F-15E Strike Eagle. Two jets were built and they ended up having some test duties including so work for NASA. The single seater was the jet on the ramp for the show.

It has a large cranked delta wing but, from a normal viewpoint, that can be seen but isn’t obvious. A look at the shadows, though, and you know what you are dealing with. The airframe is an early fiscal number – the next jet became the AFTI aircraft – and the rear fuselage has the mounting points for an anti-spin chute rig. This jet has done a lot in its flying days but it is now a museum piece.

Return of the G-III On A Sunny Sunday Morning

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A G-III is going to be of interest but when it comes on a Sunday morning when the sun is out and conditions look nice, I am going to try and be there. This was the One Flight jet which I had seen before but I wasn’t going to pass it up because of that given how good the conditions were. I got there in time to see it land and it parked up on the ramp a little north of me although not easy to get a shot of. It wasn’t staying for long so I was able to catch it taxiing back out for departure and then taking off too. Not a bad result for a start to a Sunday morning.

Not Often You Get To See A 747 These Days

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Passenger 747s are few and far between these days but the freighter world still has plenty of them. Even so, seeing a 747 is coming in is a nice addition to an afternoon. Heathrow’s arrivals included a Cathay Pacific Cargo 747-8F which was a nice bonus. I haven’t had much luck with the Cathay 747-8Fs over the years so was looking forward to it showing up. I had positioned a lot closer to the approach path when it came in and I wondered whether I might have too much lens since the 8F is the longest variant. Fortunately, it all worked out just fine and the sun played ball too.

P1A Tucked In The Back

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The Boscombe collection has a couple of interesting testbed airframes. The Avro 707 was in a previous post but another fine jet is the English Electric P1A. The precursor to what was to become the Lightning, the P1A is very similar in some respects but quite different in others. The nose is a pitot inlet without the shock cone that the Lightning adopted to house its radar. The rest of the front fuselage has quite a different shape while it also feels lower to the ground than the Lightning was. It is nice that a Lightning front fuselage is displayed alongside it for comparison.

The A380s Aren’t Dead After All

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Aviation enthusiasts are an odd bunch. They love aviation but they can really hate certain types. The emotions can really run high and no type exemplifies this more than the A380. The project hasn’t been a success by modern standards and production has now ended. This provides much glee for some people for some reason. I’m not sure why they feel the lack of success for a plane makes their life better but whatever.

I have flown on the A380 a couple of times and it was a great experience. I always like seeing them. Variety is sadly lacking in modern aviation and anything different is welcome as far as I am concerned. The onset of the pandemic resulted in many airlines parking all sorts of types and the A380s were clearly a target. If there are no passengers, the largest capacity jet is not going to be helpful. The death of the A380 was widely proclaimed. However, it turns out that this was a bit premature.

A few airlines have been reinstating their fleets and more are coming back out of storage. British Airways has their fleet back in action. Emirates is using theirs heavily. At Heathrow, I also saw Qatar and Qantas using theirs again. (Qatar might be more related to their spat with Airbus over A350s and the need for any capacity they can get.) It is good news that they are still around. We shall see what the future brings for some of the other jets that are still stored.

Lufthansa NEOs

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Lufthansa was a launch customer for the A320neo and took delivery of some of the earliest airframes. They now have an extensive fleet of the jets and they seem to be flying in to Heathrow very frequently. I ended up shooting a bunch of their jets in my brief excursion. I am not a big fan of their newest livery but, while it looks dull on the bigger jets, I actually feel like it suits the A320 a little better.

Specials Coming to London

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Shooting at an airport you don’t normally get to shoot at means you have the opportunity to shoot airlines that you wouldn’t see otherwise. What can be even nicer is if you get a special livery on one of these jets. (There is a small element in the back of your head that worries about not having shot the normal livery and that you still won’t have because of the special but that churlish thought needs to be suppressed!) Three of the jets coming in from overseas were in special finishes as was one of the locals. British Airways had an A320neo in a paint finish that was sky blue. I actually watched it depart too when waiting to board my flight home.

Kenya Airways flies their 787s in to London. The jet that came in on this day had a graphic of rhinos on the rear fuselage. Not a totally different livery but a nice addition. Brussels Airlines flies their A320s in to Heathrow and the airframe I saw was in a Tintin scheme that covered the whole airframe. It looked really good. Royal Jordanian was the last of my specials. Its 787 had a graphic advertising the city of Petra which covered the side of the jet. All nice efforts by the respective airlines.

View From The Bridge

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Arriving back in Seattle from our UK vacation, we got to use the new international arrivals facility. This includes the bridge from the South Satellite. This crosses the taxiway between the two terminal buildings. It’s not like you have the time to hang around in the area and I imagine they might discourage you from doing so. However, you can grab a few shots of the aircraft beneath you while crossing. The reflections were a bit of a problem but I am not going to be there very often so make the most of it!