A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . .

An ill wind blows

One advantage of having a 200-foot crane right outside our window on the north side of the control tower is that it has a flag mounted at the top. This flag is much easier to see from the tower than the windsock between the runways. But, as you can see in these photos, the flag is blowing the "wrong" way.

For reference, this is what it's "supposed" to look like:

LAX operations can generally tolerate as much as ten knots of tailwind, but earlier this week we had unforecast strong northeast winds gusting well over twenty. Pretty soon, this happened:

A line of departures taxi down Runway 25 Right on their way to Runway 7 Left

Whenever possible, we try to plan ahead for the times when we have to turn the airport around. This involves LAX tower, Southern California TRACON, and Los Angeles Center, along with weather forecasters. The weather folks try to give us a time frame when the winds are likely to become unfavorable, and the various air traffic facilities try to find a spot in the expected traffic flow around that time when we can reverse the flow of aircraft in and out of LAX. This is no small undertaking, as all of the other airports in the region are affected by what the traffic flow is doing at LAX.

But it doesn't always work out that way. Monday evening was one of those times. The weather service insisted that there were not supposed to be strong northeast winds, but the tower was definitely reporting winds far beyond the usual limits for west operation. First we had wind shear reports. Then several aircraft refused to land, several more refused to even accept approach clearances, and still others refused to take off, all due to the winds. So with no real opportunity to pick a good time, we had to do a "battlefield turn" - we're turning the airport, right now. Hurried coordination with approach control to determine who the last west arrivals will be, while the ground controllers scramble to move airplanes from one end of the airport to the other. Extra flight data and clearance delivery positions are opened up to handle all the flight plan revisions. Meanwhile, LA Center is putting aircraft into holding and assigning alternate arrival routes while they wait for approach control to start accepting inbounds. The impact spreads outward across the country, as aircraft still states away start being slowed or held to give the approach control and tower time to get the airspace cleared and the aircraft flows reoriented. To compound the problem, LAX isn't able to handle as many aircraft per hour in an east traffic flow as we can when we're west traffic. This is primarily because we don't have adequate runway exits for east operations. The resulting slowdown can quickly become a national flow control program.

A United B787-10 Dreamliner exits Runway 7 Right after landing

And then, not two hours later, we had to do it all over again when the winds shifted back to the west. At least one lucky trainee got to work both turn arounds. Never a dull moment!

Speaking of trainees, we have three less than we did a month ago. Congrats to CH, SS, and TG, who have all successfully completed their training. Way to go!

Happy New Year!

Sure, we're halfway through January already, but nonetheless Happy New Year! Those of you who are local know that there are currently three main road entrances into the LAX terminal complex. Each of these is adorned with a large LAX as a entryway marker. For the holiday season, the airport dresses these up with snowflake designs. When you take a close look, you can see that these snowflakes are actually composed of airplanes! I noticed this last year, but had to wait a year to catch it with the camera.

A day or two after Christmas, I went to the little hilltop park in El Segundo and took these shots:

This shot features nearly all of the A380 operators at LAX

Now that the holiday travel season has wrapped, the construction has resumed with vigor. The road that we use when we leave the tower has been closed for construction of the people mover. This is particularly clear in this night time shot:

Another night shot shows three gates (61, 50B, 51A) that have been closed for renovation work:

Meanwhile, this shot of Terminal 3 gives a hint of things to come:

The Midfield Satellite Concourse has started receiving jetways:

Birds are a common sight at LAX. So common, in fact, that a warning to pilots is included in the airport information publications. Not too surprising, since the airport runways end at the sand dunes along the beach. Less common are birds on the airplanes:

There are almost certainly birds somewhere in this picture, but one upside of the winter season is the sunsets:

And a special Happy New Year congratulations to MX, who started 2020 by becoming our first fully certified controller of the new year!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thursday was the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, generally considered to be the busiest travel period of the year. Popularly, it is believed that the two busiest travel days of the year are the day before Thanksgiving and the Sunday after. I haven't tried to verify that, but certainly the traffic getting into LAX was horrible on Wednesday. That evening I tried to get a few shots to show the traffic backed up on the roads leading into the terminal complex:

Granted, these are all poor shots, especially the last, but they hopefully give an idea of the reason that people complain about the traffic at and around LAX.  My commute to work that day brought me in via Lincoln Blvd, which runs parallel to the north complex runways. It took me a half hour to get from the right edge of the first photo to the control tower. I could have walked it in half of that. 

Earlier this week it was reported that Air France has become the second airline to begin retiring its A380 fleet. Here is the Thanksgiving Day Air France A380 departure to Paris:

On Thanksgiving Day, we had a wind shift and rain, and so we turned the airport around and went east traffic. Air traffic was relatively light on the holiday itself, and so it was possibly the easiest turn around we've ever had. We even had a double rainbow:

As it so happened, we had more rain the day after Thanksgiving. Thanks to CS and one of his buddies with airport ops, here's a much nicer shot of today's rainbow: