Photo Friday: Emirates A380s

Emirates operates the world's largest fleet of Airbus 380s, and we get to see one everyday at LAX. With a fleet of over 100 A380s, there are bound to be some with special liveries - and here are a few of them. The opening shot is the standard Emirates paint scheme on an A380 arriving on Runway 24 Right. 

This shot is special in two ways: Besides the special Year of Zayed 2018 livery, it also shows an A380 departing from Runway 25 Left. Of the various A380 operators at LAX, Emirates is the most likely to require Runway 25 Left for departure.

 

Dubai will be hosting Expo 2020, and there are several A380s with special markings to mark the occasion. This particular aircraft wears green; I have also seen one with similar markings in blue, and I've been told that there are also some in orange.

This one is my favorite. United for Wildlife is a global collaboration of seven of the world's leading wildlife charities and the Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Bonus shot:

No, it's not Emirates, but it is another A380 arriving on Runway 24 Right. Unlike the opening shot, with its dramatic tire smoke from the touchdown of the main landing gear, this shot caught the rare tire smoke from the touchdown of the nose gear - quite possibly a personal first.

Shot of the day: If 4 is good . . .

Continuing the theme from yesterday: If four A380s is good, then five must be better!

Shot of the day: 4 of a kind

There was a time when having four A380s on the ground at LAX was kind of a big thing. Some time later, I can remember the first time I had four A380s moving on my frequency at one time. Now, it's not even that big a deal to have four of them at the runway for departure. This is kind of a bigger thing than it seems, though, because the runway and parallel taxiway are so close together that if we have an A380 departing, any other A380 on the parallel taxiway must be within the first 1,500 feet of the beginning of the runway. As a result, the ground controller either has to meter out the A380 departures one at a time, and hold the other(s) back, or get all of them out there all at once, which is what you see here. This is a normal cluster of A380 departures that usually happens around 4 PM, although we don't normally get all four of them leaving at exactly the same time; however getting three of them together is pretty common. If it had been just a few minutes earlier, there could have been a fifth A380 in the picture, as Emirates has just arrived on runway 24 Right.

Shot of the day: Triple Play

KLM refresh

A recent reader comment alerted me to the LAX debut of KLM's revised livery. I have to admit that when I first saw it, I thought that I'd gotten the wrong day, as the new paint scheme isn't dramatically different from the old scheme. As a refresher, the opening shot shows a recent arrival of the old livery. The following shots all feature the new:

More super shots

I lucked into a nice shot of Asiana landing on Runway 24 Left this weekend. Since I knew it would be featured here, I took a look through the cameras to see what else I had in the same vein. The opening shots are mine; the remaining four I believe are credited to CG (again).

 

Emirates arriving on Runway 24 Left, with a KLM B747-400 on Taxiway Echo. This summer, we've been getting two KLM flights per day, both in B744s. Some of you may recall that the last two summers, the additional seasonal flight was often operated with MD11s, but not this year.

Three of a kind! To produce this shot, the ground and tower controllers had to work together, since we have some draconian restrictions on A380s on the runway and the adjacent taxiway at the same time. The British Airways jet would have had to wait in position on the runway until the Air France jet could approach the position seen here. Not seen in this shot are the dozen other aircraft that are normally departing about this same time; the A380s most likely were held back until everyone else was out of their way.

While I was gone on MINI Takes The States, Los Angeles got rain. In late July, which is virtually unheard of. Nonetheless, here is a sequence of shots showing Korean departing Runway 24 Left. Check out the spray!

 

This post features most of LAX's A380 operators; the only ones not shown are Qantas and China Southern. As of this writing, LAX gets eleven or twelve A380s a day. I hear that there are more that would like to come, gate space permitting. Here's the current breakdown of operators, and how many A380s they bring to LAX daily:

Air France: 1
Asiana: 1
British Airways: 2
China Southern: 1
Emirates: 1
Korean: 2
Singapore: 1
Qantas: 2 or 3

For those of you who want to see them in person, your best time is between about ten in the morning through around four in the afternoon. That will let you see most of them except for China Southern, who usually arrives closer to six in the afternoon. As many have lamented, most A380 operations occur on the north side of the airport. Don't despair, though: Sometime next year, that will change, albeit possibly only temporarily, when a runway construction project will push them all to the south side. More details will be forthcoming if/when I get them.

Super shots

Thank you for your patience while I was traversing the country on MINI Takes The States with Ryan's MINI. While I was away, CG grabbed a couple of super shots for you.

Asiana started their A380 service between Los Angeles and Seoul, South Korea this week, giving all you A380 spotters one more reason to come to LAX. The flight was previously operated with a B777-200, and arrives late morning and departs in the early afternoon.

Speaking of spotting, here's another A380 that I've seen a couple of times, but have been unable to catch with the camera. CG to the rescue again:

More construction photos

Last time, I showed you construction at the TBIT. But that's not all that was happening this past weekend. We had a runway (24R/06L) closed for the entire weekend. This presented some photo opportunities for arrivals on 24L. For each of the ones I got, I missed at least one more, but then the American tax payer isn't paying me to take pictures; I am expected to do some actual work occasionally! And, as usual, there's something sneaky about one of these pictures. Guesses are welcome!

Nippon Cargo has this one plane with a green nose; I haven't noticed it in quite some time, but recently it's been through several times

I was hoping this was going to be the yellow-tailed Polar

Even when it was sunny, the June gloom wasn't far away

Submitted as proof that I am able to take a picture of something that isn't a heavy jet!

Construction update

It's been a while since I've shown you how the construction is progressing on the Tom Bradley International Terminal. So despite today's reappearance of June gloom, here are a couple of shots. Seen above is the north end of the TBIT, as seen from the tower. Below, the south end:


There are also a few extra tidbits in these shots. The north-end photo also shows the repaving project taking place in the D-10 alley, which has temporarily deprived us of nine or ten gates. Another item is this:


Just yesterday, demolition began on the former American Airlines maintenance facility. Just as the old American Eagle terminal had to make way for the Taxiway S relocation project a couple of years ago, the old American maintenance shed is going bye-bye as the next stage of the Taxiway T project. The above shot was taken fairly early yesterday morning. By lunchtime, they'd gotten this far:


By the mid-afternoon, just before I went home, they'd cut all the way through:


This shot was taken today, about 24 hours later:


But wait! There's another little something special, barely seen in the opening photos. Can you spot it? Here's a closer view:


Not yet? How about now?


Now that we have five A380 arrivals each day, the midday cluster of three (Korean, Singapore, and Air France) means that somebody has to park at one of the remote gates. So far, it's either been 212 or 216. This is how an Air France A380 appears from the tower when it's parked at Gate 212.

Singapore A380 arrival

Since July, Singapore Airlines has been bringing their A380s into LAX on their daily midday service to/from Singapore (via Tokyo). I rarely get to see the late-lunchtime arrival, although I regularly see and work the mid-afternoon departure. However, I swapped shifts with a coworker recently to facilitate some production work at the theater, with the side benefit that I can share this photo sequence:









This pair of photos would look a lot better if there wasn't a great big honking crane in the middle of the shot - Those construction guys have no consideration!

Sharp-eyed observers will have already noticed that we took Singapore all the way to the end of the runway, so that the A380 exited via Taxiway BB, as opposed to the more commonly- used Taxiway AA. Here's why:

Singapore's assigned gate (123A) was not yet available. As I've mentioned before, there aren't very many places we can put the A380 without causing some degree of inconvenience. On the north side of the airport, the preferred spot to hold an A380 is on Taxiway E, just west of Taxiway AA. Thus the A380 exits via Taxiway BB and makes the left turn onto Taxiway E, then holds short of Taxiway AA.

Here, an Air France B777 exits via Taxiway AA, and turns onto Taxiway Echo in front of the waiting A380

Speaking of construction, here you can see the nearly-finished Taxiway Delta extension. We are hoping to see this open up early next month.

Bonus shot, added a couple of weeks after original posting, showing a Singapore A380 on the newly-opened Taxiway Delta passing by one of Qantas' A380s (but now, Taxiway Echo is closed: Win some, lose some)