It's the weekend, and one of my favorite things to do on the weekend (besides drink craft beer) is to check out airplanes. This is the first post for a column I'd like to do weekly here, where I'll be sharing some of my favorite airplane photos that I've taken, as well as photos shared with me by Flight Club readers.
The top photo is a British Airways A380 at London Heathrow last July 4th. I was on hand when the airline debuted its first A380 and Boeing 787 for its employees and media.
Above, we have a reader submission from Casey Paul of the final night time Space Shuttle launch. Casey said he didn't remember the mission number, but this was about a 2-minute exposure that caught the booster separation.
Here's an Air China 747-400 I caught at LAX a few years ago. Notice the water vapor on top of the wings and trailing from the ailerons. If you wanna get up close with some heavy metal at LAX, visit the In-N-Out Burger on Sepulveda Boulevard. It's right at the end of Runways 24L and 24R. The best light for photos is in the afternoon and early evening.
I took this one after departing Chicago Midway Airport (MDW), heading east over Lake Michigan to Washington Dulles (IAD). In the foreground, you'll see Comiskey Park, home of the White Sox. Just under the wing you'll see the patch of green space that used to be Meigs Field. Avgeeks will remember Meigs Field as the default airport in the early versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator. I love sitting in the back of the plane and taking shots from this angle. It's a little louder back there, but the wing always adds a cool element to the shot.
Here's a pair of DeHavilland DHC-3 Otters I saw at the Harbour Air base in Vancouver, British Columbia. I wish I had gotten a chance to fly on one of these planes!
Here's a Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine, on a British Airways 787. The serrated edges of the engine serve to reduce noise. These babies produce up to 73,000 pounds of thrust!
This Howard DGA-15 was a visitor at EAA AirVenture 2012 I attended in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I thought the curved windows and its paint scheme just gave it a cool, classic look.
I saw this beautiful Continental Airlines DC-3 at the Wings Over Houston Air Show in 2005. It is part of an awesome collection of historic planes at the Lone Star Flight Museum in Galveston, Texas. United Airlines flies a Boeing 737 with this same retro paint scheme.
This is American Airlines' first Boeing 777-300ER (N718AN) at DFW Airport, in January 2013. Those GE-90-115B engines are the biggest and most powerful engines on a passenger jet. I got to fly on this plane to London in Business Class two months later, and it's the best seat I've ever had on a plane, so far.
I hope you've enjoyed this post. I'd really like to include more reader submissions, versus highlighting only my photos. I've got plenty to share, but it's more fun to see others' photos too. So please, if you've got some plane pics you're proud of, send them my way at paul@jalopnik.com