Happy New Year!

Today marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year: The year of the snake gives way to the year of the horse. Despite there being a horse farm in the family, I have no equine photos. So instead, today's post takes a look at the Chinese carriers we see at LAX.

The opening shot is a China Southern A380 arriving from Shanghai on Runway 24 Right; below is a China Southern cargo B777.

 

Air China is the only carrier operating direct to Beijing. Their passenger service at LAX is now almost exclusively in the B777; Air China cargo uses B747s:

Cathay Pacific comes to Los Angeles from Hong Kong. Like Air China, they use B777s for people and B747s for boxes:

 

China Airlines operates B747s between LA and Taipei for both passenger and cargo operations; this one has people aboard:

EVA also offers passenger and cargo service between LAX and Taipei. Passengers ride in B777s while the cargo side uses B747s and MD11s:

 

China Eastern flies passengers and cargo to/from Shanghai. Airbus A340-600s are used for passengers, and B777s for cargo. Both seen together in this shot:

I saved the most colorful for last: Yangtze River flies cargo out of Shanghai:

The Chinese New Year is also observed in a number of places outside of China; we'll take a look at related carriers tomorrow.




Programming note:

Besides marking the beginning of the Year of the Horse, today also marks the beginning of what I expect will be the final year for me to produce this blog. In the meantime, however, I'm planning to do a post each day for the entire month of February, much as I did last year. In fact, with this post I'm sort of starting a day early!

High speed visitor

Shot of the day: Polar Vortex Parkers

The polar vortex has been this winter's big media event here in the states. Last week, hundreds of flights were canceled in expectation of brutally cold weather and lots of snow. All those non-flying airplanes have to go somewhere, and LAX hosted its share: With the exception of the two heavy jets, every airplane in this shot (I count a dozen) of the LAX west remote gates is a refugee from the east coast cold. (And yes, the time/date stamp on the video screen is slightly off!)

B747s at LAX

One of the nifty features that Blogger offers is a list of search terms that have brought people to the blog. Recently, there has been some interest in B747s at LAX. At this writing, there are still over twenty operators who bring B747s into LAX on a regular basis. There used to be many more; I can think of at least a dozen more airlines that used to have B747s at LAX but no longer do so, using instead (mostly) B777s or A330s. That doesn't include airlines that used to bring them here but are now no longer here at all; at least a half-dozen more fit into that category. So today's post is a non-comprehensive collection of B747s that I've seen within the last two months or so, in no particular order.

In the opening shot, what was once Northwest 1 (or 2, I forget which was which) arrives from Tokyo. Delta has just brought back the B747 on the LAX - Tokyo route. I don't believe Delta ever had B747-400s; this is a former Northwest aircraft.

A rare Cathay passenger B747; nearly all of our Cathay Pacific passenger flights now are in B777s.

A United B747 at Gate 77, with a B787 pulling into the gate next door.

Our daily KLM arrival about to touch down, Asiana about to go, and a Delta B777 waits its turn.  Asiana is still in transition; we still see both B747s and B777s in passenger service. Some of their B747s have been converted to cargo; we see them at LAX also.

Nippon Cargo brings in both B747-400s and -800s. This is a B747-8F. All Nippon, the passenger relative, used to bring B747s but now uses B777s.

Not a normal sight at LAX; at first glance, the tail stripes looked like British Airways. I think this arrived as an Air China flight, then departed to Victorville, perhaps for maintenance or new paint.

A rare sight these days: a B747SP, also known as a "Stubby". This was shot early on a hazy morning.

Conditions weren't any better for photography when they left mid-day. The best I could do was to render it in black & white.

Another passenger B747-400 that has been converted to cargo.

The SkyTeam paint looks nice, but it's really hard to tell whose airplane this really is, especially if you can't see the front half. The OneWorld livery is better in this respect, since the host airline's colors and tail logo remain.

Asiana again, as Japan Air departs. Japan Air is one of the carriers that used to bring B747s to LAX, in both passenger and cargo configurations.

Shot of the day: Southwest - AirTran merger

Here is the clearest display I've seen of the merger between Southwest and AirTran: a Southwest airplane wearing an AirTran nose cone!

Hobbit planes together

Since we first saw the second Air New Zealand Hobbit-themed B777 in early December, I've been hoping to catch the two of them together. There have been plenty of times when I've seen them both in the same day, but never together. It's probably happened before now, but this was my first sighting.

Cartoons

The latest Alaska - Disney livery features characters from the movie Cars. No word yet on when we'll see a Planes plane. Meanwhile, this Eva with Hello Kitty characters has been eluding me for months now, but I finally got a lucky shot:

Shot of the day: This will be a full flight!

From this weekend: The line of people waiting to clear security at Terminal 1 extends all the way over to Terminal 2; looks like that flight just might be oversold!

Thanks to RI for the assist in getting this shot.

New Year flashback

Welcome to 2014! It seems to be traditional, at the opening of each new year, to look back on the year just past. That seems a bit prosaic, and since it's easy enough to do just by clicking through the index to the right, I offer instead this look back to LAX a quarter century ago.

These snaps were taken from the old tower at the east end of the terminal complex. Circa 1988, the current tower is still several years in the future. DA brought these in recently, and graciously has allowed me to share them here.