Hazy Days

Last time I told you about the marine layer and its affect on LAX operations; this time I'll tell you about our other common restriction to visibility: Haze. Los Angeles is well-known for its sometimes lousy air quality, generally referred to as "smog". That's not a term used in aviation weather reporting; instead we use "haze", which includes smoke as well as other dry particles like dust. The big difference here is dry. The marine layer is moisture-based, and so is reported as cloud, fog, or mist (The difference between fog and mist is intensity: the international standard for fog is visibility of 1 km, which in the US is reported as 5/8ths of a mile; greater than that is reported as mist).

Haze, unlike fog or mist, doesn't 'burn off' when the day warms up. Instead, the rising sun just creates more glare (and heat: hazy days tend to be hot days). Often, the visibility is just barely enough for the airport to be VFR (3 miles), but there's not a cloud to be seen. The arriving aircraft can often see the airport well enough to shoot visual approaches, but departures can't see the preceding aircraft reliably enough to use visual separation. Thus, like with the marine layer, we can sometimes get airplanes in easier than we can get them out (all of this assuming we're on west traffic, which is usually the case). As you have probably surmised by now, these conditions do not produce good pictures. This has been frustrating for the last couple of days, as we've had several aircraft that I don't have in the photo archives.

This is one: Cathay Pacific has been bringing in B777-300's for a while now, but the only ones I've seen up til now have been at night. This one not only was the first I've seen during the day, but also was the first Cathay Pacific aircraft I've seen with the OneWorld 10th anniversary livery. The same day we also had Malaysia and Japan Air in B777's (both new here), but I didn't get them at all.

While I have shot Qatar here before, I'd hoped to get a better shot than the ones from a couple of years ago on the Atlantic Aviation ramp. No such luck. This is a bit of an oddball aircraft: an Airbus A340-200, seen here departing off runway 25 right.

Another view through the haze: An El Al B777 on taxiway Sierra, taxiing for departure, with the Qantas A380 in the background. As you can see, we've got more construction in progress: the former TWA maintenance ramp is getting trimmed to make way for the taxiway Delta extension as well as the new north-south taxiway.

In these two shots, you can see that while we've got haze on the airport, there's other stuff offshore: the setting sun seen between layers of clouds above the horizon.

Marine Layer

Most folks think of Southern California as the land of clear skies and beautiful weather. And, compared to much of the rest of the country, we are spoiled with relatively nice weather here just about year-round. It may cost a bundle to live here, but at least we don't have to shovel snow, evacuate for hurricanes, or have tornado shelters in our back yards. Right on the coast though, we do experience the effects of the marine layer, usually a low cloud layer and/or fog. LAX is a great place to see this, although it makes for lousy photography conditions.

This is often how it starts - a low fog bank starts spilling over the dunes at the west end of the airport. Sometimes that's as far as it gets, obscuring the beach but otherwise not affecting our operations too much.

Here you can see a departing aircraft climbing out over the fog (I think it's a Hawaiian B767, but no promises). Meanwhile a Coast Guard helicopter turns eastbound after departing from the ramp just behind the parked Qantas B747.

This is how it looked on the south side of the airport: A departing British Airways B747 just barely airborne off runway 25 right.

A couple of seconds later, the aircraft disappears in the fog . . .

And then pops out on top.

Sometimes we can see the marine layer over Redondo Beach to the south . . .

Or Santa Monica to the north. For some reason, these areas adjacent to LAX will often get the marine layer before we do at the airport itself. The shot below shows the eastern edge of the marine layer on the left:
The Southwest B737 on the runway in this shot is the same aircraft just over the threshhold in the previous picture. This sequence was taken a little while after the shots at the beginning of the entry; you can see that the fog is gradually moving eastward over the airport.

Another view of the south side, showing the later British Airways flight of the day taxiing in. The marine layer is now about mid-field and has started to affect our departures. Meanwhile, the arrival end of the airport is still clear:
Our daily Air China flight on about a one-mile final for runway 24 right, with downtown LA and the mountains in the background. You can see here how close the mountainous terrain is to the airport, as I mentioned in the entry discussing east traffic.

There it is!

As one of my current trainees recently discovered, when gate 58 has a B777 on it, a B737 (or an Airbus) at gate 59 becomes virtually invisible at night. In order to accommodate the B777 at gate 58, the jetways for gates 58 and 59 are repositioned so the B777 can park parallel to the terminal building. The aircraft on 59 is parked at an angle to clear the B777's wing. This sequence of shots shows the airplane as it pushes off gate 59 onto taxiway C:


For comparison, here are some daytime shots of Terminal 5:

Here you can see how the B777 is positioned at gate 58, as well as the tail of the airplane at gate 59.

A close-up of the aircraft at gate 59 when positioned to accommodate the B777 at gate 58.

This is how it looks when anything other than a B777 is on gate 58 (in this case, a B767); notice the different positioning of the aircraft at gate 59 as well. Just a slight difference, and yet it's much easier to see from the tower. It's also easier for the ground controller and the ramp crews, as in this configuration aircraft inbound to both gates can taxi into their gates; whereas in the B777 configuration both aircraft have to shut down on the taxiway and be towed in.

Where's that plane?

Here's another trap for ground controllers at LAX: Find the Delta B737-800 in this picture.