High speed visitor

Shot of the day: Polar Vortex Parkers

The polar vortex has been this winter's big media event here in the states. Last week, hundreds of flights were canceled in expectation of brutally cold weather and lots of snow. All those non-flying airplanes have to go somewhere, and LAX hosted its share: With the exception of the two heavy jets, every airplane in this shot (I count a dozen) of the LAX west remote gates is a refugee from the east coast cold. (And yes, the time/date stamp on the video screen is slightly off!)

B747s at LAX

One of the nifty features that Blogger offers is a list of search terms that have brought people to the blog. Recently, there has been some interest in B747s at LAX. At this writing, there are still over twenty operators who bring B747s into LAX on a regular basis. There used to be many more; I can think of at least a dozen more airlines that used to have B747s at LAX but no longer do so, using instead (mostly) B777s or A330s. That doesn't include airlines that used to bring them here but are now no longer here at all; at least a half-dozen more fit into that category. So today's post is a non-comprehensive collection of B747s that I've seen within the last two months or so, in no particular order.

In the opening shot, what was once Northwest 1 (or 2, I forget which was which) arrives from Tokyo. Delta has just brought back the B747 on the LAX - Tokyo route. I don't believe Delta ever had B747-400s; this is a former Northwest aircraft.

A rare Cathay passenger B747; nearly all of our Cathay Pacific passenger flights now are in B777s.

A United B747 at Gate 77, with a B787 pulling into the gate next door.

Our daily KLM arrival about to touch down, Asiana about to go, and a Delta B777 waits its turn.  Asiana is still in transition; we still see both B747s and B777s in passenger service. Some of their B747s have been converted to cargo; we see them at LAX also.

Nippon Cargo brings in both B747-400s and -800s. This is a B747-8F. All Nippon, the passenger relative, used to bring B747s but now uses B777s.

Not a normal sight at LAX; at first glance, the tail stripes looked like British Airways. I think this arrived as an Air China flight, then departed to Victorville, perhaps for maintenance or new paint.

A rare sight these days: a B747SP, also known as a "Stubby". This was shot early on a hazy morning.

Conditions weren't any better for photography when they left mid-day. The best I could do was to render it in black & white.

Another passenger B747-400 that has been converted to cargo.

The SkyTeam paint looks nice, but it's really hard to tell whose airplane this really is, especially if you can't see the front half. The OneWorld livery is better in this respect, since the host airline's colors and tail logo remain.

Asiana again, as Japan Air departs. Japan Air is one of the carriers that used to bring B747s to LAX, in both passenger and cargo configurations.

Shot of the day: Southwest - AirTran merger

Here is the clearest display I've seen of the merger between Southwest and AirTran: a Southwest airplane wearing an AirTran nose cone!