I was recently in LAX and had some time to shoot around LAX.  While Chicago is a major international airport, LAX has a more diverse selection of aircraft from different countries showing up and it is certainly easier to shoot at.  Whether you are at Imperial Hill, near the In’n’Out Burger on Sepulveda or near the Proud Bird, there are a lot of options.

One of the things I was keen to do was get some shots of the A380s.  LAX is one of the airports that attracts A380s from a number of operators with more to come in the not too distant future.  Qantas and Singapore were early operators of the aircraft and soon brought them to LAX.  Korean has recently introduced the plans and they are now a daily arrival.

I have occasionally seen A380s on the ground at Heathrow and LAX when passing through but the only one I had seen flying was at Oshkosh a couple of years ago.  As I wrote in a recent post, we tend to crave what we haven’t seen and my interest in getting A380s on this trip was pretty much in that vein.

The timing of arrivals can easily be tracked online.  Unfortunately, the majority of A380 operations are on the northern runways which are a little less convenient for shooting.   However, I did get lucky with a Qantas A380 showing up on the southerly runways when easterly approaches were in operation.  I got a few, even if the light wasn’t always the best.  Soon they will be very common and I will wonder what the fuss was – oh, rubbish.  I still like to catch 747s!