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.

Where can we go from here: State Capitals

Time for the oft-promised and delayed continuation of the "Where can we go from here" series. This time, I'm going to take a look at who goes to which of the state capital cities. Service to the state capitals is hampered by the fact that many states' capitals are not located in one of their larger cities. In fact, some of them are in cities which are for the most part unknown to non-residents. As examples, I'll cite Frankfurt, Kentucky; Jefferson City, Missouri; and Carson City, Nevada. Shockingly, there is no direct service from LAX to any of these. In fact, this has almost become a study of "Where we can't go from here: State Capitals"; of the fifty state capitals, only thirteen can be reached non-stop from LAX.

Phoenix, Arizona, is one of the better-served state capitals. Southwest, United, and US Air (nee America West) all operate regular flights to and from Phoenix. The United and US Air flights are often flown by their regional partner airlines, Skywest and Mesa, respectively. The US Air service was flown by America West prior to their merger earlier this year. The flight usually runs just under an hour. Because Phoenix is so close nearby (in jet terms) and pretty busy (it's a US Air hub, and Southwest has a strong presence there too), there is often a flow control program for aircraft going there: we have to call and get a "wheels up" time for each of our Phoenix departures to ensure that there's a hole in the line for them. This rarely delays them more than fifteen minutes (and there's an incentive for us to keep the delays at less than fifteen minutes: beyond that they become 'countable' delays).
A pair of Mesa (callsign: Air Shuttle) CRJ's. Above is a CRJ-900 at gate 10 next to a B737-300. Below, a CRJ-200 pulls into gate 6 with an A321 next door.

Sacramento, California, currently home of the "governator", is also about an hour away, but there's never any difficulty with traffic restrictions. Skywest flies the route for United, using CRJ's. Southwest also goes into Sacramento from LA. You'll see Skywest RJ's later on.

Denver, Colorado, gets great service from LAX: We have four airlines that go there on a regular basis. Frontier and United both operate hubs in Denver; I've seen just about every type United operates on this route. At the moment, Denver is the only direct destination for Frontier out of LA. American and Southwest also offer service into Denver. Flight time runs 1:45 to two hours.

Atlanta, Georgia, being the busiest airport in the country, not to mention the home of Delta, gets regular service from LA. Besides Delta, AirTran also flies from here to their hub in Atlanta. Flight times are four hours or a little less. Delta has run nearly everything on this route, but AirTran only uses their B737's; I don't think the B717's have enough range and payload to make it worthwhile. When AirTran first started flying into LAX all they had were the B717's, and they went from here to DFW. The non-stop to Atlanta came later, when they got their B737's. For a short time, until they got the 737's, AirTran contracted with Ryan Air to fly the route for them, using Airbus A320's. I wish I'd gotten a picture of one of those, since they've long since gone elsewhere and been repainted.

Honolulu, Hawaii, is served by the widest range of airlines from LA: Six different airlines fly this route, and each of them a couple of times a day. American, Continental, Delta, Hawaiian, Northwest, and United all currently use B757's and B767's. Not surprisingly, flight times are all about the same, at around five hours and fifteen minutes. I can remember when Hawaiian used DC10's and Amtran used Tristars, but no more.

After Honolulu, it's not nearly as exciting to talk about Boise, Idaho. It's not as exciting to go there either: From LAX, you've a choice of Horizon's Dash 8's or Skywest's CRJ-200's. Horizon flies for Alaska out of LAX, and their flight time for this route is right around two hours. The Skywest CRJ's fly for United, and they're about twenty minutes quicker.

Indianapolis, Indiana, gets passenger service from Northwest and cargo service from Fedex. Either way, the flight takes about three and a half hours. During the summer a couple of other airlines also went from here to Indy; maybe again next summer? We can only hope.

Boston, Massachusetts, my mother's home town, gets several flights a day via American and United. Flight times hover around five hours. Boeings predominate on this route, although I have seen United slip in an Airbus from time to time.

A pair of heavy Boeings: An American B767-200 and a United B767-300.

Although it's not easy to see, the -300 is longer; compare the distance from the nose wheel to the wing root.

St. Paul, Minnesota, gets regular service thanks to sharing the airport with its neighbor Minneapolis. Northwest has their big hub there, and I've seen them use short Airbuses, B747's, and everything in between. Sun Country also goes from here to MSP, using B737's. Flights run around three hours, give or take.

United offers service into Oklahoma City's Will Rogers World Airport using Skywest CRJ-700's. Flight time is about two and a half hours. Come to think of it, I haven't noticed this flight go out within the last week or two, but I'm including it here anyway.

Nashville, Tennessee, is served by both American and Southwest. Both use B737's and have flight times around three and a half hours. Amazingly, I don't seem to have a picture of SWA and AAL B737's together; gotta work on that.

Austin, Texas, gets flights from American, Southwest, and United. American uses MD80's while Skywest operates CRJ-700's for United. Flights run about two and a half hours.

Salt Lake City, Utah, is a Delta hub, but also gets service from Southwest and United. Skywest flies the United flights using CRJ-200's and CRJ-700's. Oddly enough, Skywest also operates Delta Connection flights to SLC out of LAX. This creates the paradox of having two Skywest flights with different parent airlines' paint schemes going to the same place at about the same time. New ground controllers at LAX sometimes get surprised by the Skywest that doesn't park where all the other Skywests do. After a couple of times they figure it out (usually) because the flights operating for Delta, besides being painted in Delta colors, also have a different range of flight numbers (the Delta Skywests are usually in the 4000's, while the United Skywests are usually 5000's and 6000's. Usually). Another clue is that the Delta Skywest is often in a CRJ-900; Skywest doesn't operate -900's for United at LAX.

It figures - after all that blah about the Delta Skywests often being CRJ-900's, all I have is a picture of one that's in a -700. The -900 is longer, and can be identified by the two emergency exits over the wing; the -700 only has one; check the -900 in the first Phoenix photo above.

As I mentioned in the opening, this has become just as much a study of where you can't go from here: I counted eighteen states that receive no direct flights from LA at all. I'm not going to make a list of them here; I've been trying to avoid this whole topic becoming one great big list. A US map showing the affected states would've been nice, but the idea just occurred to me and it's already taken a week to put this together. For that same reason, most of the photos will have to go without captions - just imagine that each one has its own pithy remarks. For added interest, you can read this entry again tomorrow and imagine new pithy remarks!

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.

Blue Tails, part Deux

As I mentioned before, I've been surprised at the number of paint schemes that feature blue on the tail. There are also a modest variety of all-blue or nearly all-blue paint schemes; you'll see a few this time, but that'll be the subject of yet another future post.

Delta had the same basic paint scheme for most of the 60's, 70's, and 80's. Then in the 90's, they went through two changes. Now, post-bankruptcy, they're changing again. I don't have any shots of the original scheme, and the first change is pretty rare these days. The shot above shows the two 90's schemes: Change one, in the background, which is fairly reminiscent of the original 'widget' design, and change two (flying flag) in front. The shot below illustrates the flying flag in the background, with the latest leaning widget design in front.

Alaska's navy blue eskimo design looked bigger on the older 737-400's; the newer -700's, -800's and -900's have a taller tail with more white space above the logo. Last time I showed a new Sun Country scheme; here's the more commonly seen blue and orange sunburst scheme, which I prefer - I like lots of color. Alaska: boring (at least this design); Sun Country: good.

Here's a better illustration of the old and new United paint schemes. That's a 757 in the new 'white top' scheme on the runway, while a 767 in the previous scheme waits in sequence.

Another view of Continental's blue tail with the golden globe on a 737 just airborne off of runway 25 right. Looming in the background is the new Airbus A380, on a publicity visit last November. We're supposed to start seeing the 380 in scheduled service here later this year; Singapore, Qantas, and Emirates have all announced intentions to bring the A380 to LAX.

Two big Boeings: A Korean 747-400 on departure roll and an All Nippon 777-300 taxiing out. The 777-300 is longer than the 747; in fact it's so long that it can't hold between the 24's on the most popular exit (taxiway AA) - a restriction that also applies to the Airbus 340-600. When either of these lands on runway 24 right, it has to be started across runway 24 left before the next arrival for 24 right crosses the threshhold. We actually had an operational error last month because an All Nippon 777-300 showed up with a new identifier (B77W) that we hadn't been briefed on; another aircraft landed behind it and rolled to the end of the runway while the B777 was holding on AA. Afterwards, it was determined that the 777 was sticking nearly ten feet into the safety zone for the runway - the incident was classified as a minor runway incursion.

All Nippon's cargo operation is Nippon Cargo, seen here rolling out on runway 25 left - you can tell that it's on landing roll because the thrust reversers are engaged: see the open slots in the engine nacelles compared to the previous picture.

More cargo, in this case a Fedex MD-11 just lifting off runway 25 left.

Another oddball: An Antonov AN-124 climbs away off the south complex. We don't see these too often thankfully, as they sit on the runway for three or four minutes before starting their takeoff roll. I have no idea what they need that long in position for, and none of their crews speak sufficient English to explain it.

A TACA A320 at Terminal 2, sandwiched between an Aviacsa 737-200 and an Air Canada Embraer 190. As I mentioned before, we haven't seen Aviacsa in a while. TACA and LACSA share the same paint scheme (like Lan Chile and Lan Peru), but they do label their aircraft with "TACA" or "LACSA" on the front of the fuselage. It's hard to tell in this picture, but the Air Canada paint scheme is all-over eggshell blue, with a bit more blue shading on the tail around the maple leaf. The Air Canada blue is even lighter than the Korean Air blue seen above. Air Canada also has a version that has a white fuselage with the same blue tail.

Big and bigger, again: An Air France 777-300 and an Air New Zealand 767-300. Air France used to bring in 747's, but nowadays they bring in 777's (-200's and -300's) and Airbus 340-300's.
New Zealand brings in 747's, 767's, and 777's.

Not quite blue, but close enough: Like Air New Zealand, AirTran (callsign: Citrus) has aqua-colored tails, except more so. The engine nacelles on this 737-700 are definitely blue. AirTran, which started out as ValuJet, also operates B717's (nee MD-95's), but they don't bring them here anymore. I did see them daily when I was in Memphis.

ATA is now defunct, but they had a variety of blue-tailed paint schemes, two of which are seen here on a couple of 757's. The upper shot is a 757-300; the lower a 757-200. Midwest (formerly Midwest Express) is another of the solid-blue contingent.

Another extinct operator: Champion had a small fleet of 727's; this was the last one we saw at LAX.

An AeroMexico trio: A better shot of the bare-metal scheme (it's hard to get a good picture of a bare-metal airplane), followed by the all-over paint scheme and a better shot of the AeroMexico Connect ERJ. The pink tail in the first shot belongs to Delta's Breast Cancer Awareness 757.

Alternative paint schemes: The Star Alliance was a international group of airlines that were code sharing and cross marketing. Lufthansa and United were among the members. Here, a Lufthansa 747 touches down on runway 24 right. This paint scheme could be confusing for controllers, as it was hard to tell who the airline was by looking out the window. Fortunately, I think it's being phased out.

I seem to recall that this North American 757 was somebody's presidential campaign visiting LA last December, but I don't remember whose it was.

A corporate 767-200 about to touch down on runway 24 right.

Another corporate airliner, but this one is 'just' a 737. Those stripes on the tail make my eyes hurt!

Another Memphis flashback: I shot this Baron on the Signature ramp about three years ago. It was operated by AirNet Express (callsign: Star Check), who was primarily a check hauler for the Federal Reserve. There used to be a big business flying checks at night, but as the banks transition over to entirely electronic systems, this segment of aviation is fading away. AirNet has diversified by also handling small packages, particularly lab samples. Not all of their planes have blue tails; ala Braniff, they also have red tails and yellow tails. That control tower in the background is the Fedex Ramp Tower.