Where can we go from here: Additions and Corrections

In an earlier entry, I mentioned several cities that only receive cargo flights from LAX. Since then, I've worked an overtime day shift during the week, and found a couple more:

Toledo, Ohio, is a cargo-only destination from LAX. The route is flown by Air Transport, using DC-8's. Flight time is about three and a half hours.

Another cargo flight to Brussels: Singapore Cargo lifts off from runway 25 right.

In the same posting about cargo operators, I mentioned that Fedex flies out of here to hubs in Memphis, Indianapolis, and San Jose. The first two are correct, but Fedex's west coast hub is actually in Oakland. Mea culpa. If you want to get to San Jose, you'll have lots of passenger options: American Eagle, Skywest, and Southwest all offer jet service from here to there (and back again). Flight times run from forty-five minutes to an hour. Skywest and Southwest also go into Oakland; those flights seem to run about fifty to fifty-five minutes.

In addition, I said that the Fedex flight to Fort Worth Alliance is usually done with an Airbus. So naturally, this week they had to do it with a DC-10:

A Fedex DC-10 departs off runway 25 left. On the parallel taxiway in the background is an Eva Cargo MD-11. The MD-11 was the follow-on model. Obvious differences are the MD-11's longer length and winglets. Less obvious in this picture is the MD-11's much better climb performance.

Speaking of DC-10s, a while back I mentioned former Northwest Airlines DC-10s that had been retired only to re-enter service with ATA for their military charters. Here are a couple of shots I discovered in a back corner of the iBook's hard drive:

As you can see, the transformations were not full-fledged makeovers.

One more ATA shot from the archives. ATA was the last scheduled US carrier to operate the Lockheed Tristar, my personal favorite of the first generation wide bodies. This was the last Tristar to show up here, sometime last year.

Where can we go from here?

One of the neat things about LAX is the wide variety of destinations with direct service. These days, it's possible to get from almost anywhere to nearly anywhere else via the hub and spoke airline connection systems, but direct service is not always so easy to come by. If you're in a city that serves as some airline's hub, i.e. Atlanta (Delta and AirTran), Dallas (American), or Houston (Continental), then you're in good shape. If you're not in one of these places, the first leg of your journey will be to one of them, where you can then get on another airplane that will hopefully take you where you want to go. LAX does serve as a hub for United, American, and Alaska, and thus we have many options with those carriers. Southwest also has a major presence here, as does Delta. Not surprisingly, foreign airlines also have strong availability: Air Canada, Aero Mexico, and Mexicana all have many flights out of L.A. each day.

Many other airlines, foreign and domestic, have limited service from L.A., usually to their respective capitals or hubs. At this writing, there is direct service from L.A. to destinations on five of the seven continents of the world. Currently, we have no direct flights to Antarctica nor Africa. Egypt Air used to serve the latter, but they haven't flown out of L.A. for some time now. Even with at least fifty airlines operating here, not all destinations are served daily; some are only two or three times a week (Moscow and Dublin come to mind).

It's taken me several weeks to compile a list of destinations, airlines, and flight times; even so, it may well not be complete. If I'd done it in August, there would be at least a dozen more destinations than what are now available. Presentation is the problem: I don't want to just paste a great big table or list of destinations here, as that would be pretty clunky. So instead, I'll just hit various interesting highlights as they occur to me:

Shortest and Longest:

The shortest scheduled flight out of LAX is twelve minutes: Skywest flies non-stop to Oxnard, which is just up the coast from the LA area. Thanks to where Skywest parks on the airport, it can sometimes take this flight longer to get to the runway than it does to get to its destination once airborne.

The longest scheduled flight out of LAX is the Singapore Airlines flight to Singapore, which in the summer takes about sixteen and a half hours. In the winter time, I've seen it run closer to eighteen. At present, no one else makes this run out of LA, and Singapore does it with the Airbus A340-500, seen here arriving on runway 24 right. The A345 has the big engines of the A346, but without the extra-long fuselage. Thai also brings A345's into LAX, on the next-longest flight, to Bangkok, which usually runs just a few minutes less than the flight to Singapore.

This is the only shot I've got of the Thai airbus; it arrives about 8:30 in the evening, and then leaves again a little after midnight - not the best times to attempt photos. The B747 at the gate next door is the China Airlines (callsign Dynasty) with the Boeing Dreamliner paint scheme.

No Pax - Boxes only:

There are a few destinations that are only served by cargo carriers: actual humans need not apply. Among these are Brussels; Luxembourg; Fort Worth, Texas; Louisville, Kentucky; and Wilmington, Ohio.

Brussels and Luxembourg are both served by Cargolux, using B747-400's. You can tell that this is a factory-built freighter by the short hump: Passenger -400's have the longer hump that first appeared on the -300 model. The winglets are the clue that differentiate the -400's from the earlier models; so far as I know, no one has yet retrofitted winglets as they have on the B727's and B757's. We are starting to see former passenger -400's that have been converted to cargo use; Eva and World both bring in ex-passenger, now freighter -400's.


Most of the Fedex flights out of LAX go to Memphis, Indianapolis, or San Jose. But there's one that goes to Fort Worth's Alliance airport. All passenger service from here to the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex goes into DFW (thanks to the Wright Amendment, Southwest doesn't go from LA to Dallas Love - yet). This flight always seems to be in an Airbus A310, which is a shorter version of the A306. Fedex has both. When I was in Memphis, I referred to the A310's as "short buses", and everyone seemed to be clear about their traffic. Here's one of each.

The only flights from LA to Kentucky are for boxes only. UPS has their hub at Louisville's Standiford airport, served usually with B767-300's, although we do see B757's as well. Most UPS flights out of the LA area actually go from other airports, such as Long Beach and Ontario.

Airborne Express and DHL have combined forces, although you wouldn't know it to look at their fleet - we see at least three different paint jobs each day, and they don't all park in the same place, either. There are three different places at LAX where they park, and the three paint schemes don't necessarily correspond to the three ramps. Regardless of the color of the airplanes, they're the only way to Wilmington from here.

That's it for now; next time we'll look at jets versus props.

Blue Tails

In an earlier post, I showed a bunch of airline paint schemes that featured predominantly red tails. This time, I'll show you some that feature blue tails. Much to my surprise, when I started selecting the shots for this posting, I found that there are probably more blue tailed paint schemes than red - not what I had thought would be the case. So many, in fact, that this will be part one, with another installment to follow. I'll focus mainly on airlines in this segment.

A Singapore A340-500 just about to touch down on runway 24 Right.

This airplane has been in the air since yesterday to get here.

A couple of blue tails: An Aeroflot 767-300 (yes, Aeroflot operates Boeings!) taxis past a Lufthansa 747-400. The flight to Moscow goes over the polar ice cap.

Going through my collection, I found a number of shots of airlines that I realized aren't operating here anymore. You don't really notice that they're gone during the day-to-day operations; it's more a recognition that 'You know, I haven't seen so-and-so lately.' This Varig cargo (from Brazil, I think) DC-10 is one of those; we also used to have Varig passenger service in MD-11's. Now Korean (!) flies that route.

Here's an odd-ball: A 747SP, seen here in Saudi colors. The 747SP was Boeing's first attempt at a really long range airliner in the 1980's. It has since been surpassed by the 747-400 and the 777, along with the Airbus 330 and 340.

A Lan Chile 767-300 in the flare on runway 24 Right. Lan Peru aircraft have the exact same paint scheme; as far as I know, the only way to tell them apart is their radio callsigns.

A Mexicana A320, with Southwest's NBA special behind. Mexicana's paint scheme used to be green - same scheme, just green. Now it's dark blue.

This shot shows another no-longer-here carrier: an Aviacsa 737-200 (noisy and smoky - look at those skinny nacelles), with a WestJet (Canadian, and still here) 737 next to go.

A Polar Air Cargo 747 taxis by as a Cathay Pacific 747 rotates. These are both 400-series aircraft; the cargo version retains the short hump.

Another cargo 747-400

This one's a little special in that it's rarely seen moving during the day:
An Air Transport (cargo) DC-8 takes the runway for departure.

Another cargo 747-400, but this one's a conversion. World also operates MD-11's.

I've just recently started seeing this Spirit paint scheme;
it's a bit more colorful than their other one, seen below with an Air Tahiti Airbus
340-300 (the bane of LA departure controllers - what a dog!)

A Skywest CRJ-700 in the new United scheme takes the runway, with an Allegiant MD-80 (-83 or -88, I don't remember which) waiting its turn. Allegiant is not a regular operator here; I was fortunate to catch this shot. This is also a good comparison of the size of the CRJ versus the MD-80; there are shorter versions of each (CRJ-200 and the MD-87/B717)

I couldn't decide which of these shots to use, so you get both. United's old scheme and Continental both have a lot of blue on the tails.

Another new one: I've just started seeing this Sun Country scheme; not as colorful as their other (previous?) one, which features a multi-shade blue fuselage and orange tail.

A USAir special state scheme on this Airbus 319; before America West merged with USAir, this paint scheme was seen on an America West 757.

Big and bigger: A New Zealand 767-300 in front of a China Southern 777-200.

AeroMexico has started painting their new aircraft; this 737 still has the bare skin with blue trim.

Here are a pair of Embraer ERJ's at terminal 5: In the foreground, a Delta Connection 145 (operated by ExpressJet) showing Delta's latest paint scheme; and behind, a Costera 135 (AeroMexico regional partner). Costera also operates Saab-Fairchild 340's into LAX.