Photo Friday: Southwest Louisiana paint

Southwest has been doing special state-themed liveries for quite some time now, and the latest one is for the state of Louisiana. A bit of explanation might be in order: the Louisiana state bird is the Brown Pelican. This B737 is painted similar to the Louisiana state flag, which features a white pelican with a nest of three chicks. Union, Justice, Confidence  is the Louisiana state motto and also appears on the state flag and seal.

Here's a bonus shot for Filip, who asked recently about the blast fence at the west end of Runway 24 Left. This is how that end of the north complex appears from the tower. As a double bonus, you can also see the current state of the construction on the Midfield Satellite Concourse:

Remote Gates, revisited

Nearly seven years ago, I made a post inspired by the viewing statistics of the blog: https://fromthecontroltower.blogspot.com/2011/05/remote-gates.html

The amazing thing is that, seven years later, that post is the second-most popular post of all time.*  Even now, it gets a couple of dozen visits every week. Most, but not all, come from a forum post at airliners.net in which a question was asked about the gate numbers at the LAX west remote gates. The reason I tell you all of this is because it occurred to me that we are using a revised version (seen above) of the quick reference guide that I showed in that 2011 post.

Beyond that, I don't have much new to say about the west remote gates. At a quick glance, pretty much everything I said about them in 2011 still holds true except that we now have six (instead of four) remote gates that can accommodate the A380. We rarely use them though because the remodeled TBIT can handle six A380s at one time. In fact, the most common place at the remotes that we use for an A380 isn't a gate at all: Recently, the airport has been closing a section of Taxiway E-17 to store an idle A380 between flights. On the chart above, it's the section of E-17 directly above the green and orange boxes. The A380 tows into that position from Taxiway AA, and to get out it has to push backwards either into E-16 (and then pull forward) or all the way back onto AA. I haven't any photos of that because it pretty much always happens in the late evening. I can, however, show you how we designate the closed area on our ground radar display:

* - The all-time most popular post is this one: https://fromthecontroltower.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-endeavour-has-landed.html

Photo Friday: Blue Moon Rising

For full moon fans, 2018 is a special year: Not one, but two blue moons occur this year. The first, featured here, was in January, and was also noteworthy for being a supermoon. In some circles it was known as the Super Blue Blood Moon. The second blue moon of 2018, and the last one until October of 2020, occurs this weekend.

As the moon rose behind the Runway 24 Right final, it became a game to see if I could catch an arrival just as it passed in front of the moon:

I managed to get two arrivals as they passed through the moon, but they're almost impossible to see (enhanced versions can be seen farther down):

Here are tweaked versions of the earlier two shots to make them a bit more visible:

I had forgotten about this until I was going through these photos, but January's full moon was also noteworthy because it was concurrent with a lunar eclipse:

Our next lunar eclipse will take place in July, but it will not be visible in North America. The next blue moon -- the second full moon in a calendar month -- will occur on Halloween, 2020.

Happy Easter everyone!

Photo Friday returns!

Alitalia  has returned from their seasonal break. Their new paint is a subtle change from before, and with the exception of the deletion of the green fuselage stripe, the differences aren't easy to spot in my photos. The fuselage is now an ever-so-slightly grayish white (they call it ivory) in place of the refrigerator white of before. If you look closely, you can see six graduated white stripes or bands around the aft end of the fuselage that lead into the now metallic green on the tail. I think the red on the tail is also now metallic paint. For that matter, the fuselage paint itself might actually be a metallic white.

Personal curiosity about the fuselage color lead me to this blog op-ed, which includes the Alitalia  press release:

https://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo_and_livery_for_alitalia_by_landor.php

And here's another news article:

https://thedesignair.net/2015/06/04/alitalia-deliver-not-only-a-new-brand-but-a-new-brand-promise/