Special visitor

 For a little while, we had a very special visitor in Fort Lauderdale - the Qatar Amiri Flight Boeing 747-8BBJ - probably the most expensive BBJ ever created.

2021 Starts.

 Weather.. surprisingly.. has not been very helpful going into the New Year, but there have been some nice days for shooting in between the clouds, so have been taking advantage of a new standing location on a mound behind the Ron Gardner Viewing Park.  Especially with westerly operation, I haven't had a decent spot to capture the long landing arrivals, and with the height of this mound, some views are now available.

Delta A321 arriving on runway 28R

American A321 departing runway 28R

Air Canada Rouge A321 arriving on runway 28R

American A312 departing runway 28R

 JetBlue A321Neo departing runway 28R

Hopefully, as the year goes, the weather  and the traffic ... gets better.

A little history.... North American Airlines

 My first encounter with North American Airlines was on my first trip to New York to spot at LaGuardia and JFK and the paint scheme did intrigue me some with the flag on the tail and the blue and white on the fuselage.  My good friend Phil Derner (@PhilDernerJr) spent many years at North American plying the skies all over the world on various charters.

North American was founded in 1989 and began operations in January 1990 providing services for connecting to El Al flights and charters for Club Med flying Boeing 757-200's.  The airline later gained access to Boeing 767-300ER's for longer international type charters as well as 2 Boeing 737-800's.  In April 2005, the airline was acquired by World Air Holdings, holding group of World Airways, another charter operation that also ran a cargo operation.  In April 2007, World Air Holdings was purchased by New ATA Holdings and renamed the company to Global Aero Logistics.  Unfortunately, bankruptcy in 2014 saw the demise of North American.

Here are some shots of their aircraft I managed to get over the years.

Weather in South Florida has not been conducive to getting out to shoot at FLL, but as fall approaches, hopefully this will change soon......

Unsuspecting Cargo Flights

 One thing that seems to have become a norm in these times of COVID-19 are unsuspecting cargo flights.  What do I mean by that?  Well, for those of us that follow traffic into Fort Lauderdale will know that the only Emirates flights they we (used to) get were the 5 times a week Boeing 777-200LR from Dubai that we as a family also traveled on.  So, when Boeing 777-300ER flights suddenly started arriving once or twice a week, we wondered why was going on.  The explanation given to us - cargo - using an empty aircraft to transport cargo to and from Dubai.

This has become a norm for a few pilots that I follow on Twitter - British Airways has done exactly the same from London to a couple of cities in China - flown an empty 777-300ER outbound and filled it with cargo back to England.  

For the latest flight, it was an added bonus as Emirates decided to send us one of their 2020 Dubai Expo special schemes which I managed to catch on some decent light as it headed back to Dubai.

A previous standard color scheme B777-300ER on approach.

Some more time spent behind the camera lens.....

Palm Beach Memories and Fort Lauderdale incl. Arizona One

After weeks and weeks of not being able to get out to FLL, re-editing some old images (a couple of which I will share), I finally went out to FLL this week to get something I have been looking for for ages - Southwest Arizona One as a 737-700, not the old -300 that I got many times.  It is still the dead of summer, and sun angles are still not the best, but I wanted to get out to get this finally after many ill-fated previous attempts, and it was worth it.

But, firstly, I went back to some of my original trips for Lam Beach International (PBI) to look for some stuff that I had never posted before - can't believe they are 13 years ago - US Airways, Delta, Continental, airTran, some memories for sure!!!

And then ta couple from the FLL trip this week, including Arizona One.

Finally... getting time behind the camera lens......

Rome - July 2018

In between time spent in Malaga, we also headed off to Rome to visit the city for a while.  I didn't get as much chance to take aircraft shots in Rome, with the exception of the last afternoon/evening when our hotel was right under the departure line of the airport and I managed to get some shots.

Alitalia A330s

Emirates A380

 

Alitalia B772

Qatar B773

Malaga - July 2018

One of the trips that we took in the last few years was to visit friends in Malaga, Spain.  We flew British Airways direct from Fort Lauderdale (now longer a route for them) to Gatwick, and then after a day in London, took a flight from Gatwick to Malaga.  While there, I managed to get out to Malaga Airport to get some views that I would not normally get...... here are a few of them.

Scandinavian A320Neo

Brussels Airlines A319

Private Learjet 60

My first even CS300 (now Airbus A220) from Air Baltic

Turkish B737-900ER

Norwegian B737-800

Norwegian B737-800

Ryanair B737-800

Ryanair B737-800

Air Europa B737-800

Iberia Express ATR72

Air Europa ATR72

Easyjet A319

Vueling A320

Vueling A320

Vueling A320