Tag Archives: Qatar airways

777-300ER High Lift Flows

Regular followers of the blog will know of my aerodynamics background and the fascination I have with fluid flows. Anything that shows it off will pique my interest. The damp conditions that the Pacific Northwest offers can, if the light is nice, provide a good show on a plane that is configured for landing. Plenty of flap angle and low speeds will drop the pressure and condense the moisture. This Qatar Airways 777-300ER was coming over SODO on its was into SEA when I shot it. Plenty of moisture over the flap system and some conspicuous trailing vortices. Just the sort of thing this guy loves.

My First A350-1000 – Thanks Qatar

The A350-1000 has started to be delivered in some numbers.  However, none of the operators that I get to see regularly has any in their fleet at this point.  Some of the early deliveries went to Qatar Airways and they have been flying them to Dallas.  Since I had a free weekend in the area on a work trip, I decided to catch my first examples.

Things conspired a little against me, though.  On the Saturday, the weather that had just passed through had left some northerly winds which meant the approaches were coming from the south which is not so handy for getting shots.  I did find a location but it wasn’t a great spot.  Heat haze was still a bit of a problem and the angles were rather limited.

On the Sunday, normal service was resumed with a southerly flow.  However, just before the A350 showed up, they decided to do a sweep of the runway.  They moved arrivals to the inside runway which meant it the Qatar jet was a bit far away compared to everything that had been arriving on the outer runway a short while before.  Still, I got the shots.  It also taxied out just before the sun went down.  However, they crossed to the other side for departure so not much of a shot opportunity.