A Lufthansa Boeing 747-8i passes downtown LA on final for LAX
A sunny break from the Pacific Northwest’s typically gloomy winter weather is always a pleasant opportunity. Last month I ventured south from Seattle for a couple days seeking some sun and planespotting.
Winter sunsets come early, but it also presents some great nighttime spotting opportunities
My wife and I stayed at our favorite LA hotel, the H Hotel Los Angeles. It’s walking distance from the airport and to the famed spotting viewpoint park at the end of runway 24R/06L, a.k.a. the In-N-Out park, so named for its proximity to the famous burger restaurant. It’s actually just across the city line in Westchester for those who like to be exacting about locations.
LA sunsets are really all they’re claimed to be
This trip, 24R/06R was closed, and had been for months, for a big refurbishment project. This meant the spotting at the park was poor, as the planes have been landing on 24L/06R on the north side of the airport, and the two southside runways are seeing additional traffic.
Large sections of the runway appear to have been dug up and the pavement refreshed
Not having a rental car to go visit the Imperial Hill viewpoint on the airport’s south side, the best option turned out to be the most comfortable one – the H Hotel’s magnificent roof deck. I did walk over for a burger, and some spotting along Sepulveda Boulevard, but the best light and angles for the situation were definitely from the hotel.
I did manage some classic belly photos from the sidewalk along Sepulveda Bouledvard
Even for repeat visitors, LAX never gets old. The photo options are great, and there’s a seemingly neverending assortment of airlines and planes.
The views south from the hotel are often backlit, but the queen of the skies still demands a photo
Japan Air Lines has retired all of its Boeing 777-200s, and its very last one stopped overnight at LAX before being flown over to the Victorville boneyard.
While I was there, Japan Air Lines last 777-200 stopped at LAX on its way to the boneyard at Victorville, Calif.
Southern California gets winter inversion layers with fog, but sometimes it’s clear as a bell. The weather on this visit was slightly foggy in the morning, and the haze never quite lifted, but there were views of the downtown core and Hollywood sign from the rooftop.
The roof deck at the H Hotel is very popular with planespotters
To everyone who gave up hope for New York’s airports, I can see why you did. For way too long, JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark were congested outdated disasters. But at long last the powers-that-be are investing in massive renovations. We wrote about JFK’s New Terminal One project, which broke ground a few months ago. But without a doubt, LaGuardia is the airport that is furthest along in its makeover. And the results so far look amazing.
What surprised me most is how great the new Terminal B is for planespotting. Thanks to its design as an unusually vertical airport, including skybridges over busy taxiways, the views are excellent.
Read on for a photo and video walkthrough around the gorgeous Terminal B, with plenty of amazing views of the ramp and runways.
How’s this for an AvGeek irony: it’s hard to planespot from a plane. Sure, while you’re on the ground there’s tons of aircraft around. But once you’re in the sky you’re zooming by other planes so rarely — and so quickly — that it’s hard to catch any of them. But one recent flight I took was a fun exception to that rule.
Thanks to a winter wave of employee COVID infections and a high-profile system meltdown, Jetblue had a tough past year from an operational perspective. But they rebounded from those issues, and their onboard economy product still shines strong — especially the free high-speed inflight internet (“Fly-Fi”).
Fly-Fi is one of JetBlue’s major points of differentiation, and they know it
To minimize touch points in the COVID era, you can use your smartphone to control the screen
Fly-Fi is a high-bandwidth satellite-powered system that’s now available across the fleet. It provides gate-to-gate connectivity so you could start using it from the moment you board. On my flight from New York to Mexico I waited to log on since there were great takeoff views to be had.
I’ve always loved the plane spotting at New York’s JFK International Airport. A lot of America’s other biggest airports are dominated by hub operations from individual airlines, like Delta @ Atlanta, American @ DFW, United at nearby Newark. But JFK feels more like the United Nations of airports, with a variety of airlines from tons of countries. Here’s a quick video of a loop between some of the terminals at JFK.
N755NW, a 42-year old NWA DC-9-41 Blasts Out of STL
Happy New Year! Heck, happy new decade while we’re at it.
With the closing of each year I invest a considerable amount of time in reflection before setting my goals and aspirations for the future. A perennial resolution I have set (and then catastrophically failed to meet) has been to make sense of the ~150K+ PlaneSpotting photos I have amassed since diving into the hobby over the summer of 2009.
While trying to determine what goal – if any – I would set around this, an intriguing question dawned on me. How has PlaneSpotting changed in the past decade? Sure, we didn’t have JetTip, ADSBexchange, or FlightRadar24 to allow for surgical, dare I say lazy, spotting. We just had to show up, maybe listen to ATC, and see what the day would bring. But how has what we might see changed?
Well, I have photographic proof of what aviation looked like at a number of airports over the course of 2010. In retrospect, it was a good travel and spotting year for me. What if, perhaps, I set a mini goal to at the very least look at every photo shot over that one year and highlight particular items of note? I spent a number of hours over the past weekend doing just that. One clear difference? My skill and equipment have come a long way over the past decade! But I digress.
Click through to join me for a stroll down AvGeek memory lane for a year which proved transformational to the AvGeek world.
