Today we welcomed a new airline at LAX: Turkish Airlines began non-stop service between Los Angeles and Istanbul, Turkey. Turkish plans to operate to LA four days a week, using Boeing B777-300s for the twelve-hour flights.
This is another one of those "only at LAX" shots - I doubt that there's anywhere else in the world that you could see this combination of aircraft and carriers: Alaska and Southwest B737s, Turkish B777, and a Qantas A380.Completely unrelated, we had a bit of excitement later in the evening when the LAPD pursued a suspect through the Sepulveda tunnel and into the airport. Coming around the curved ramp to the departures level, one of the pursuing police cars bumped the suspect's minivan from behind, causing the minivan to spin around and come to rest against the rail. The driver was subsequently taken into custody, although it took a while for the police to allow traffic back into the airport. The maneuver was neatly handled in an area with no uninvolved vehicles nearby to be endangered. What was is all about? I've no idea; the police helicopter pilots wouldn't say on frequency - too many other ears listening, no doubt; especially as today was the 20th anniversary of the Rodney King beating.
Are the passengers warned about the watery welcome?
ReplyDelete("Darn it Earl, it's raining here too!")
Also: it is refreshing to hear an account of police competence.
C.V. I found your blog buried in a reader's profile on another aviation-related blog. Good find, sir and a great blog. It is too bad that you don't get more traffic. Great PIX and I'd like to point out your truly excellent writing. It is a pleasure to read. Over the cource of several days, reading backwards, I've read about 95% of your archive. Congratulations.
ReplyDelete-Craig
Craig -
ReplyDeleteThank you for the kind words. On the subject of writing, I have to say that anyone who thinks that they would like to be a professional writer should spend some time doing something like a blog first - I've found that it's a good deal more work, and incredibly more time-consuming, than it at first seemed it should be. This is especially the case because I'm my own editor. That in itself is hard, since it requires actually reading each and every word - spell check is nice, but it can't fix "form" when you meant to say "from". I would bet that sort of thing is the most common "spelling" error on the web these days. Even on published posts, I periodically find that I need to go back and fix things like that. I recall that my 7th or 8th grade English teacher expressed her disappointment that at the time I wasn't performing up to my potential; I wonder if she would think that this is any improvement . . .
Besides the writing, the pictures can also consume immense amounts of time. The real dogs I try to delete while they're still in the camera, although a while back I did do a whole post of messed-up shots (and the funny thing about that is that there's another blog here on blogspot that focuses on nothing but bad airplane pictures, and they linked to it!) But even so, finding just the right picture in my archive can be a tedious task; it's gotten to where it's sometimes easier to just wait for a good opportunity to take another one.
Several folks at work have asked about how much traffic I get, and for a long time I had no idea beyond the occasional comments from readers. A while back I found BlogPatrol, which keeps track of that sort of thing and so I now know that I have, on average, about one or two visitors per hour. Not surprisingly, the vast majority come from the US, but Australia and Canada are well-represented; readers also come from the UK, New Zealand, the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Switzerland - coincidentally (or perhaps not) all countries who have an airline presence at LAX. Would I like a greater readership? I suppose so, but that would bring with it an even greater sense of obligation to post good content more regularly. At the moment, I aim for at least one new post a week, and sometimes finding the time to do that can be a challenge. Alas, the price of fame and fortune . . .
Thanks again for the kind words!
CV