# Planespotting: Railfanning's Aerial Variant



## WhoozOn1st (Aug 7, 2013)

Plane spotters keep their eyes on the sky - *LINK*

"NEW YORK — Most people can't wait to leave the airport once they've reached their destination. Douglas Thompson can barely tear himself away, which explains why Thompson, a visitor from Glasgow, Scotland, was perched happily on a bench in the aptly named Planeview Park one recent afternoon, watching jets roar into the sky from LaGuardia Airport's Runway 4."

"...in this age of tight airport security, Planeview Park, which is run by the city, is a blessing to those whose idea of fun is watching planes take off and land in startling proximity. They record their registration numbers, snap pictures of the bellies, and sometimes witness an anomaly: a go-around to avoid another plane on the runway, a rarely seen aircraft carrying a foreign leader, or the worst-case scenario — a crash."

Back in the day, my family would head out to LAX - the airport - once in a while and park off the incoming end of the runway to spend an afternoon or evening watching planes land. Some big piston airliners still in the mix in those days, e.g. Lockheed Constellations. Talk about cheap thrills!

​


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## Ryan (Aug 7, 2013)

Big fan myself (I started a thread for the 747 I caught earlier this summer).

The picture is actually Gravelly Point at the northern end of Runway 1 at National. You can see the Wilson Bridge in the background.


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## WhoozOn1st (Aug 7, 2013)

Ryan said:


> The picture is actually Gravelly Point at the northern end of Runway 1 at National. You can see the Wilson Bridge in the background.


Guess I shoulda mentioned that that's just a found photo. The pic that accompanied the story - of Planeview Park and a guy in the article - was disallowed for coding reasons, but can be seen by clicking through the link to read.


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## Swadian Hardcore (Aug 8, 2013)

WhoozOn1st said:


> Plane spotters keep their eyes on the sky
> "NEW YORK — Most people can't wait to leave the airport once they've reached their destination. Douglas Thompson can barely tear himself away, which explains why Thompson, a visitor from Glasgow, Scotland, was perched happily on a bench in the aptly named Planeview Park one recent afternoon, watching jets roar into the sky from LaGuardia Airport's Runway 4."
> 
> "...in this age of tight airport security, Planeview Park, which is run by the city, is a blessing to those whose idea of fun is watching planes take off and land in startling proximity. They record their registration numbers, snap pictures of the bellies, and sometimes witness an anomaly: a go-around to avoid another plane on the runway, a rarely seen aircraft carrying a foreign leader, or the worst-case scenario — a crash."
> ...


Even though that is DCA, it sure is a great view of a Mad Dog. Not an American Super80, it looks to be a Delta one. Alos a little plane at the back, can't see it very well.

I always record the plane reg for every flight I can. Same with record railcar numbers or Greyhound bus numbers, it's just a good record of what I've done and not done.


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## Texan Eagle (Aug 8, 2013)

I do planespotting too. Fortunately the last two cities I have lived in both have huge airports and at least one publicly accessible vantage point for photographing planes. DFW had the Founder's Plaza observation area right under landing approach of Runways 18C and 18R that are used by most international and widebody arrivals, and SFO has Bayfront Park overlooking the over-water runways 28L and 28R, again the two main runways used by international arrivals and departures.

Here are a couple of sample photos I have taken-

DFW:






SFO:


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## railiner (Aug 8, 2013)

Great thread!

When I lived near Denver, I spent many hours hanging out on Havana Street at the approach to Stapleton's 26L and 26R watching the show, with my scanner tuned to the tower frequency. At one point there were so many 'spotters', that they constructed a viewing platform midway down the south side of the 26L runway so photographer's could shoot over the perimeter fence. Since they moved out to the new airport, all that is gone with the wind.....


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## Ryan (Aug 8, 2013)

Swadian Hardcore said:


> Even though that is DCA, it sure is a great view of a Mad Dog. Not an American Super80, it looks to be a Delta one. Alos a little plane at the back, can't see it very well.


Looks like US Airways. Blue bottom and you can just pick out the red stripe.


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## PRR 60 (Aug 8, 2013)

Ryan said:


> Swadian Hardcore said:
> 
> 
> > Even though that is DCA, it sure is a great view of a Mad Dog. Not an American Super80, it looks to be a Delta one. Alos a little plane at the back, can't see it very well.
> ...


It does look like US, but US retired the DC9 / MD80's years ago - I believe well before the livery change after the HP merger. Also, the US red stripe stays just above the dark blue underbelly all the way to the rear of the plane. This one has the dark blue move downward as it approaches the wing with the red stripe well above.

Looks like an investigation is in order.

Sidebar story: I went down to PHL for the last US flight of a DC9. They made a pretty big deal about it, with poster boards of old photos, US suits on hand, and lots of former DC9 crew people telling stories. As the flight taxied out, the PHL fire crews performed the obligatory water cannon salute. The problem - they fired the water cannons at the wrong plane. They mistook a US MD80 for the DC9, and let them have it. I bet the crew on that MD80 had to make a quick PA announcement to calm the passengers who just saw the fire department douse their plane with water.


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## rrdude (Aug 8, 2013)

BWI has a great park for this, directly X from runway, on the south side of airport.

https://foursquare.com/v/thomas-a-dixon-jr-aircraft-observation-area/4b54e116f964a5200ed127e3


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## tp49 (Aug 8, 2013)

PRR 60 said:


> Ryan said:
> 
> 
> > Swadian Hardcore said:
> ...


Did an image search on airliners.net and didn't see a DC9 or an MD80 in US' current paint scheme. Also, the picture is at least four years old because i found it in several other places on the net as early as 2009. My guess would be DL but who knows.


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## PRR 60 (Aug 8, 2013)

tp49 said:


> PRR 60 said:
> 
> 
> > Ryan said:
> ...


I'm thinking it's an Airtran 717.


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## tp49 (Aug 8, 2013)

You're probably right about AirTran. Since I never fly them and since they merged with WN I completely forgot they exist.


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## trainman74 (Aug 8, 2013)

WhoozOn1st said:


> Back in the day, my family would head out to LAX - the airport - once in a while and park off the incoming end of the runway to spend an afternoon or evening watching planes land. Some big piston airliners still in the mix in those days, e.g. Lockheed Constellations. Talk about cheap thrills!


I often see people sitting and watching planes in the little green space at the intersection of Lincoln and Sepulveda, which is right by the end of the northern pair of runways. The In-N-Out across the street also gets a lot of people eating and watching the skies at the same time.


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## Ryan (Aug 8, 2013)

Here's the article it came from (published in 2009):

http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/12/10/173827/36/travel/The+Best+Plane+Spotting+Happens+Just+Outside+Of+DC's+Restricted+Airspace

I concur that it's an Airtran 717.


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## AmtrakBlue (Aug 8, 2013)

I guess watching the planes come into PHL from the north on the Platt Bridge is not a good idea...if I'm driving. 

Or at Newark, NJ from 95. Double


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## Swadian Hardcore (Aug 9, 2013)

trainman74 said:


> WhoozOn1st said:
> 
> 
> > Back in the day, my family would head out to LAX - the airport - once in a while and park off the incoming end of the runway to spend an afternoon or evening watching planes land. Some big piston airliners still in the mix in those days, e.g. Lockheed Constellations. Talk about cheap thrills!
> ...


In-N-Out is legendary for all the heavies flying over to land. You can see all kinds of planes, but these days most of the heavies are 777s. EK seems addicted to them with over 100 in service. Pretty soon I expect the 777 to exceed 747 total production.


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## Texan Eagle (Aug 9, 2013)

Swadian Hardcore said:


> In-N-Out is legendary for all the heavies flying over to land. You can see all kinds of planes, but these days most of the heavies are 777s. EK seems addicted to them with over 100 in service. Pretty soon I expect the 777 to exceed 747 total production.


Not just EK, every major airline loves 777 for long-haul, and why not? It is one amazing beast of a plane with a great safety record (until Asiana SFO accident happened, it had an eviable ZERO fatality record).

If the list on Wikipedia is to be believed, total 777 orders have already surpassed total 747 delivered since the beginning of time, and soon total deliveries will also exceed since Boeing is churning out way more 777s compared to new 747-8s.


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## Swadian Hardcore (Aug 10, 2013)

Texan Eagle said:


> Swadian Hardcore said:
> 
> 
> > In-N-Out is legendary for all the heavies flying over to land. You can see all kinds of planes, but these days most of the heavies are 777s. EK seems addicted to them with over 100 in service. Pretty soon I expect the 777 to exceed 747 total production.
> ...


Yes, that's why the 777 is pretty much guarenteed to knock out the 747 in sales. In fact, it could knock out every other widebody in sales. Especially with the new 777X in development, which would have even better effieciency and other improvements.

EK does stand out from all the other 777 operators because they operate SO MUCH more. They might as well dump all the other planes in their widebody-only fleet, since the 777 variants pretty much handle anything they need. 777X will likely oust the 787 in capacity, so might as well go ahead. Turn EK into a huge WN.


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## Texan Eagle (Aug 10, 2013)

Swadian Hardcore said:


> EK does stand out from all the other 777 operators because they operate SO MUCH more. They might as well dump all the other planes in their widebody-only fleet, since the 777 variants pretty much handle anything they need. 777X will likely oust the 787 in capacity, so might as well go ahead. Turn EK into a huge WN.


That's because EK has a huge all-widebody fleet. They may be operating SO MANY 777s, but do not forget they are also behemoths in operating A380- they have 35 in service and 55 more (yes, 55!) on order. They also have 50 A350s on order. And not to forget the 23 A330s and 14 A340s they have in service now. Highly unlikely EK will become a big WN with single plane type. They serve a variety of destinations that need different capacity- the A380s for super heavy traffic markets like LHR and JFK, 777s for long reach where A380 is a bit too much, and the A330s to serve second-tier cities in Indian subcontinent and Africa where a 777 is also too much, or the airport is not big enough to handle a 777 or A380.


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## Swadian Hardcore (Aug 11, 2013)

Texan Eagle said:


> Swadian Hardcore said:
> 
> 
> > EK does stand out from all the other 777 operators because they operate SO MUCH more. They might as well dump all the other planes in their widebody-only fleet, since the 777 variants pretty much handle anything they need. 777X will likely oust the 787 in capacity, so might as well go ahead. Turn EK into a huge WN.
> ...


A330 ships don't seem that useful for EK. They might find more use in operating some narrowbodies, since EK seems to have some planes running with poor load factor. The A340 looks to be useless. Too bad, because I like flying on it.

But it's too small for a quad-jet. Right now the A380 is the only quad-jet with decent CASM compared to the 777 or the modern composites.


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## Rover (Feb 2, 2018)

SD Mullis gets some great LAX in-terminal plane spotting in this 4K video.


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## Rover (Feb 2, 2018)

Casey's planespotting is an excellent Youtube site.

Crack of dawn arrivals at London Heathrow.


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## Rover (Feb 2, 2018)

Planespotting from many airports at this YT channel:

PlaneSpottingBerlin ✈ Aviation Videos


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## Rover (Feb 2, 2018)

For a comprehensive listing of radio frequencies for an airport, use:

RadioReference.com - Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference


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## Rover (Feb 2, 2018)

I like the HD work, for scenery in flight, on this channel: Protyreus HD World 

For Example... the Alps


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