Tag Archives: united

United’s Oldest A320 Heads West

I was reading a couple of articles that were discussing old jets getting retired.  The original MD-11 was retired by FedEx and, when I checked my catalog, I didn’t have any shots of it.  United has retired its oldest A320 so I looked for that one too.  Turns out I did shoot it once.  It was arriving at O’Hare and was painted in the colors of Ted – United’s short-lived low-cost airline.  I guess the jet lasted longer than Ted did!

United 787-10 Arrival at Paine Field

The 787-10 has a center section that is too long to fit in the Dreamlifter.  This means that they can only be assembled at the North Charleston plant.  The conspiracy theorists amongst us may think this was a deliberate part of the plan to focus production there and close the Everett line but, whether that is true or not, Everett is now only addressing issues with airframes already built and is not building any new 787s.  However, some continue to come here from the east coast for rectification work prior to delivery.  That means we get some 787-10s showing up and one of them was for United.  I hadn’t planned on it but was there for something else and got this as a bonus.

United Max Delivery

While awaiting the NOAA arrival, I happened to shoot a 737 that was coming directly overhead on its way to SeaTac.  I don’t shoot much of these flights but every once in a while, I do like to try and get a symmetrical shot from directly beneath the jet just for the fun of it.  As this one came over, I just assumed it was another Alaska 737-900ER since they come in all the time.  However, when I looked closely at the shot, I realized it was a United jet and, more importantly, it was actually a Max9.  Turns out it was on its delivery flight from Boeing Field so must have only left a few minutes before.

United Max On Test

With the grounding order rescinded but the FAA, Boeing was getting Max jets ready to go for customers that were in a position to take delivery – namely US airlines and those that use US registered aircraft.  United has a bunch of Max 9 jets on order and one of them was making a test flight just before Christmas.  I got to see it return from its test.  It taxied back in the south entrance to their ramp past a bunch of other test airframes awaiting acceptance.

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!

United Retro Jet

I once got to shoot the United retro colors on the A320 while I was at SFO up the tower but I had not got a decent shot of it actually flying.  When it showed up on approach to SFO, I was pretty pleased.  Sadly, the cloud cover was not cooperating terribly well.  Only when it had got past me did it pop into better conditions.  It was okay when further out on final but neither of these were too helpful.  One day!

Terminal View from the Shuttle

I was in San Francisco for a work visit a little while back.  I was picking up a rental car so took the shuttle that runs around the terminal areas and then out to the rental car facility.  This trip gives you a view of the apron areas by each terminal.  As you drop away from the central terminal area, you get a good view back across the ramp area predominantly used by United but also other Star Alliance carriers.  I grabbed some shots from the shuttle to give an overview of this area that is otherwise obscured from view.

Bye Bye United 747s

The disappearance of passenger 747s from service continues.  Today is the last day for the United 747 fleet.  I do not have anything of their earlier versions of the jet but I have seen the 747-400s in service a lot and have flown on them a couple of times too.  I won’t be doing so again.  A flight from San Francisco to Honolulu will repeat the first service and was sold out a long time ago.  The planes have been heading to the storage yards in recent weeks and after today, there is one more to make the trip.  Now the 777s and 787s will be responsible for the long-haul services.

When United Thought That Ted Was a Winner

Occasionally I post about disappearing airlines.  Normally they are airlines that went away because they ran out of cash.  This one is a different story.  The arrival of low cost airlines caused a lot of the majors to think that they could fight the newcomers by setting up their own lost cost operation.  United came up with Ted.  I guess this was like half a United!  They moved a bunch of their Airbus A319s and A320s from United to Ted and set them up on services which, I guess, did not have the premium passengers and so was focused on the economy traveler.

Ted lasted for a while.  I don’t know whether it was ever a profitable business or not.  When you viewed it in the context of the overall United business, it might have been good for a while.  However, whatever the underpinnings of the business were, eventually United came to the conclusion that Ted was not a good idea.  I don’t know whether the cost base was too high to sustain it or whether it was just undercutting revenue from United but they gave up on the idea.  The jets got repainted and became part of the United fleet again.