Something old, something new

Today I got to catch an airplane I've known about for some time but have only seen once, and that when the camera wasn't handy. This Lufthansa B747-8I  wears a legacy livery that, in my humble opinion, is much more appealing than the new livery that Lufthansa has recently introduced. Since Lufthansa operates the B747-8 seasonally at LAX, it's been months since the last time I saw this airplane and I've been hoping to catch it ever since.

 Just to recap, Lufthansa's livery went from this:

To this:

 And now this:

In other livery news, United just announced their new paint scheme yesterday. And then lo and behold, look what taxied out this afternoon:

This chance shot shows the new United colors on a B737-800 and the retiring ex-Continental colors on a SkyWest E-175:

 

Congratulations to DD and MK, our latest controllers to finish training -- just in time for summer! 

Construction update

Time for another batch of construction photos. I'll start with the newest (and most obvious) change: the crane that has been erected at the bottom of the D-8 alley for the Terminal 1.5 project. When it's not in use, it is normally parked in this position. Because the construction zone has encroached so far up into the D-8 alley, aircraft that push back in that alley must pull up to the top (where the Southwest B737 is) before starting engines to reduce jet blast.

Meanwhile, looking to the west, the north end of the Midfield Satellite Concourse (MSC) is progressing, with most of the glass installed. 

The southern end of the MSC is steadily nibbling into the American maintenance ramp and narrowing our view of Taxiway R. 

Look ma! No heliport!

The redesign of the Terminal 4 parking garage has taken away the emergency heliport. I think this was done in preparation for removing the bridge that currently connects the Terminal 3 and Terminal 4 parking garages in order to make room for the new "people mover" project.

I caught a few shots of the crane going up at Terminal 1.5:

 

This is an airport, so here's an airplane photo:

There's a bit of a story behind this shot. Lufthansa has introduced a new logo that replaces the yellow with a white logo on a blue background. So far, the only aircraft that I've seen with the new logo at LAX have been some of the Lufthansa Cargo MD11s, and I have yet to get a photo of one. These flights usually arrive and depart on the south side of the airport, and the control tower doesn't offer an ideal vantage point for shooting that side. This particular flight, however, arrived from the north and ended up on the north complex. Hoping to finally get a shot of the new logo, I had the camera out and ready. When I saw the airplane I was disappointed that it didn't have the new logo, but opted to shoot it anyway since I already had the camera out. It wasn't until later that I actually was able to take a good look at the photos and see that this plane was worth the effort.

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

And now, for sport

Wow -- two posts in one weekend. Clearly somebody needs a social life. Meanwhile, there was recently in Brazil a little get-together about some ball games. Excuse me, matches. While I didn't follow the World Cup closely, I did hear about it hear and there. A couple of B747s might have clued me in.

A little closer to home, San Francisco has a baseball team:

Shot of the day quiz revealed: LAX A340 family photo

Wow - apparently it was a slow weekend out there in the blogosphere. Lots of you chimed in with comments about this shot, and a number of you nailed it. Several others called out various things I hadn't noticed, so shout outs to you all.

As most of you observed, this photo features three A340s. What I thought was noteworthy about this shot was that it featured all three variants of the Airbus A340 which can regularly be seen at LAX. Namely the A340-300, -500, and -600.  No scheduled carriers bring A340-200s to LAX, although I have seen one here a few times.

Of the three models that we see daily at LAX, the A340-300 is by far the most numerous. Modeled here by Swiss, we also receive A343s from Iberia, Phillipines, and Air Tahiti. Previous A343 operators at LAX include Air France, Lufthansa, LAN, and Virgin Atlantic.

The A340-500 is the rarest of the three variants seen at LAX; less than three dozen were built, and only one carrier still operates them here: Singapore, who has five of them and operates (for a few more months, anyway) the A345 on the longest scheduled routes in the world. The Newark-Singapore route is the longest, followed by LAX-Singapore. Singapore has configured their A345s for 100 passengers (no coach seating), but will be trading their A345 fleet to Airbus as part of a deal to acquire more A380s and A350s. I've seen speculation that Singapore has been losing money on these routes for some time, as the price of fuel has escalated greatly over the last five years. The -500 has the longest range of any of the A340 models; it can fly 9,000 nautical miles (17,000 km), and in order to do that it has a fuel capacity of 59,000 U.S. gallons (222,000 litres). Singapore has said that they're retiring the A345s in accordance with their "young fleet" policy; their A345 fleet is now approaching ten years of age. The only other operator to bring A345s to LAX was Thai, who had four and operated theirs between LAX and Bangkok, a route that I believe was a bit longer than the LAX-Singapore route. Thai's A345s disappeared from LAX last year, replaced by B772s and B773s. The nonstop service to Bangkok went away at the same time; Thai's Boeings now go to Seoul, South Korea, before continuing on to Bangkok. In the same vein as the Singapore speculation, I read somewhere that Thai would have needed to operate their A345s at 120-percent capacity in order to break even on the LAX-Bangkok and similar routes. I suspect that both the Bangkok and Singapore to Los Angeles nonstops were maintained for the prestige of offering the only direct service between those city pairs, but prestigious does not equate to economically viable. I don't know what became of Thai's A345s, but I imagine that Airbus may have some difficulty reselling the ones they're taking in from Singapore, as the A345 is a really niche aircraft, built for really long routes. Emirates operates the world's largest fleet of A340-500s; they have ten, but we don't see them at LAX. I'll be sorry to see the A345s leave; at LAX the -500 is our favorite A340 variant. The big Rolls Royce Trent engines that it shares with the -600 make it a much better performer than the -300, but it doesn't pose all the complications on the ground that we face with the longer -600.

Lufthansa is one of four A340-600 operators at LAX; the others are China Eastern, Iberia, and Virgin Atlantic. Thai also has been seen here in an A346, although I can only recall it happening once or twice; it was not a regular thing. Until the introduction of the Boeing B747-8, the A340-600 was the longest airliner in the world. I've previously detailed the problems that the A346 creates for controllers at LAX, so I won't belabor that point further, except to say that we're glad that there aren't more of them.

LAX aircraft spotters' guide: Airbus A340-600

A recent comment included the following question: "Does any carrier fly an A340-600 into LAX?" Why yes, they do. Three carriers bring in a total of four A340-600s each day at LAX.

On its website, Airbus touts the A340-600 as the longest airliner in operation (although the new Boeing 747-8 now beats it at 250 feet long). With a length of 247 feet (75.3 meters) and a wingspan of 208 feet (63.5 meters), its size presents some difficulties at LAX. I've mentioned A346s and the challenges they represent at LAX before, so I'll let that go except to say that thankfully we only get four of them each day. The A346 has a range of 7,900 miles (14,600 km) and a maximum passenger capacity of 475, although a more typical seating configuration would be about 380. Each of the carriers using A346s at LAX has a different seating capacity, and all are considerably less than the advertised maximum. According to Wikipedia, Airbus has recently wrapped up the A340 program as all ordered aircraft have been delivered. The reported 2011 price for a new A340-600 was $275 million or €190 million.


The first A340-600 we see each day arrives from Shanghai, China. China Eastern was the first Chinese airline to purchase Airbuses, and has five A346s, which are configured for 322 passengers. The flight from Shanghai takes ten to eleven hours, while the return trip is about fourteen hours.

With a Skywest E120 Brasilia and a Delta (former Northwest) B747-400

With an American B767-300

From the archives: With an Air France A340-300 (Air France no longer brings A340s into LAX). The A343 is a relatively poor performer in the terminal environment; it's a real dog on climb-out. Not so the A346; notice the much larger engine cowlings on the -600.

China Eastern in SkyTeam colors

With a pair of B737s: Above, a Southwest -700; Below, an Alaska -800

Virgin Atlantic operates two A340-600s into LAX each day from London's Heathrow airport. Virgin's A346s carry 308 passengers, and Virgin has currently has nineteen of them, although there are plans to reduce that number. Used Airbus, anyone?

From the archives: With a Northwest B757-200

With a LAN B767-300

Sandwiching in-between a pair of B777-300s, with a CRJ9 waiting to get in

Almost the same scenario, except with the new paint on Virgin (and old on Air France) and New Zealand is in a B747-400

Our final A340-600 arrives after an eleven-hour flight from Munich, Germany. Lufthansa is the only carrier offering direct service between LAX and Munich. Lufthansa has two dozen A346s, each with a seating capacity of 306.

With a British Airways B747-400

References:

Airbus Industries A340-600

Wikipedia: Airbus A340

China Eastern Fleet Information A340-600

Wikipedia: China Eastern Airlines

Lufthansa Fleet A340-600

Wikipedia: Lufthansa

Virgin Atlantic Our Fleet

Wikipedia: Virgin Atlantic

Birds of a feather

LAX serves as a hub or focus city for a number of airlines, and so it's not anything special to see a number of one airline's aircraft here at once; Air Canada, Alaska, American, Continental, Delta, Fedex, Qantas, Southwest, United, US Airways, and Virgin America all regularly have a gaggle of airplanes here. But for some of our other carriers it's not so common to have more than one plane here at once, or it may only happen once during the day. Here are some: