This one was a little tricky: Virgin America's tails look very similar to Virgin Atlantic's new design. The US flag and registration should have been a tip-off. Yes, I know I told you not to run the registrations, but I didn't say you couldn't look at them!
TACA, in an A321. The A321 is the longest of the 'small' Airbuses; compare to the Virgin Atlantic A319 and A320 in the picture above. The one still on the gate is a 319; besides its shorter length, the A319 only has one over-wing exit, while the longer A320 has two. The longer-still A321 has none!
An early morning arrival: DHL A300. The Airbus 300 series is very popular with the freighters; besides DHL, Fedex has a bunch of them, as do some other operators at LAX.
This is Northwest's old paint scheme. Despite the poor quality of the photo, shot through the tower window shades (I thought this might be the last one I saw) , this was taken only a couple of weeks ago. Since then, I've seen two or three more of the 'old school' Northwest planes. Oddly, some of the new scheme Northwest aircraft have already been repainted in Delta colors, while some of these old ones fly on. While we don't get Northwest DC-9's here at LAX, a Northwest pilot told me just a few days ago that those planes are getting the Delta treatment, too (I figured they'd just park them- they're all old enough to drink! The DC-9's, I mean! And compared to the newer Airbuses, they drink the Jet A. They're also smokers.)
Japan Air B744, maybe half a second before touchdown on runway 24 right.
Japan Air B744, maybe half a second before touchdown on runway 24 right.
Mexicana, seen here in an A318. The 318 is the shortest of the narrow-body Airbuses. It's so short, in fact, that the vertical tail had to be extended to regain control authority lost when the fuselage was shortened. Airbus had to do the same thing on the -200 version of the A330.
An Air France B773 towing into gate 23. I've recently noticed that all of the Air France flights at LAX are now in B777's, both -200's and -300's. No more A343's.
El Al used to bring in B747's back before I started taking pictures, but nowadays all we see are B772's. As you can tell from the sun's angle, El Al is an early arriver - sometimes the first of the west arrivals, occasionally the last of the east. A few weeks ago, they were both - They were set up on 4-mile final as the last over-ocean arrival when the ILS failed, so after they went missed they got to be the first west arrival.