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

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.

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.

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!

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)

Airbus Arrivals

It was a big day for Airbuses at LAX today (well, yesterday now that I'm writing this). Singapore finally began their much-anticipated scheduled A380 service to Tokyo, which means we now have two carriers bringing the A380 into LAX.

Seen with a KLM B747-400

With an Air France B777-300

With a Southwest B737-300

With a Volaris A319

Unexpectedly, Aeroflot also showed up in a new Airbus model. It wasn't all that long ago that they replaced their B767-300s at LAX with A330-200s; this was the first A330-300 that I've seen in Aeroflot colors. This is also the first A333 I've seen at LAX that wasn't a Northwest/Delta aircraft; we have a number of A332 operators, but until now Northwest/Delta was the only one to bring in an A333.



Another surprise was this Iberia A340-300. Iberia started flying into LAX just a couple of months ago, but this was the first time I've seen them show up on a Friday: