Another merger...

Is it Continited?

or

Unitinental?

Climbing into the gray skies of Autumn.

December 10, 2010.

Nearing the end of a long flight from the Far East.

The First Officer does his walk around checking out his brand spanking new Boeing 737.

Notice how smooth the fuselage is...

N855NN

B737-823

Delivered to American Airlines on 08/10/2010

October 7, 2010

Blue Angels at SFO

Fleetweek 2010

October 7

San Francisco International Airport

The opposing solos take off for practice.

(It seems that for practice they just take the closest plane on the flightline, never mind the number on the tail....)

400 knots at 500 feet

Approaching 28R for the overhead approach.

Pitch up right break!

BA1!

Two!

Three!

Seven(!?)...

The Blue Angels have spaced themselves out for landing on RY28R.

BA1 is over the threshold, BA2 is short final coming over the approach light pier, BA3 is right base turning final and BA7 is on right base.

Early morning

When atmospheric conditions are just right the aircraft can make really long contrails.

Here we had just enough sunlight peeking through the marine layer to light up the contrails.

"Cloaking device, on!"

Qantas 5 engines

On Monday night the QANTAS flight to Sydney had an engine blow up about an hour after taking off from KSFO. The B747 returned safely to San Francisco, flying with 3 engines operating.

On Wednesday the QANTAS flight arrived carrying a replacement engine under the port wing.

The B747 which ferried the new engine to SFO from Sydney was towed to the Superbay.

It took only a couple of hours for mechanics to remove the engine from the ferry aircraft for installation on the plane from Monday's flight.

(It was a hot day at SFO as you can see from the heat haze in the above photo.)

The ferry B747 is ready to go back to the gate to prepare for Wednesday's flight back to Sydney.