On Memorial Day, we decided to take a quick trip down to Wilmington Air Park (ILN) and see the parked Delta planes. They are parking some 767s and 717s while the demand is low. We also got to see some other gems while we were there including the Patriots 767 plane and a few other cargo planes including an Amazon Prime 767.
One of my favorite planes, the Boeing 777 or Triple 7 has a new version that took its first test flight today – the 777X. There will be two new versions of the plane the 777-8 and the 777-9 which are going to be larger versions of the 777-200 and 777-300. I am excited to see this and I hope I am able to take a flight on this in the next few years. Congrats to Boeing on this huge accomplishment!
The first Boeing #777X is in flight. After a few hours of flying, the jet will land at Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington.
I recently switched my travel to United Airlines after some less than pleasant experiences with American Airlines in April which caused us to miss a family wedding. After a month and thirteen flights, I felt like I had a good sample to make a comparison between the two. I realize that this is incomplete because it does not factor in things such as extreme summer or winter weather since all of this travel was during a relatively tame spring month. Also both sets of data do not have any international flights since my job does not require this yet for me. So with those qualifications let’s jump into the details!
This past week I took my first flights of 2019. The first two were non eventful and I took an Airbus A319 and a Boeing 737-800 on American Airlines back and forth to DFW. However, my next set of flights were much better! I got to finally set foot on an Airbus A330-200 and in first class to boot from an upgrade. First time I got to enjoy the lie-flat seats.
Here she is in all her beauty, American Airlines Airbus A330-200 N289AY.
Of course, I had to document my seat experience!
It is going to be hard to go back to economy after this.
The flights back were not as great. The winter weather is in full force and I got stuck in Chicago for a bit. I landed early and decided to take a standby flight back home so that I could get in at a reasonable hour at the cost of my confirmed upgrade on a later flight. Well, my luck had run out as that flight got delayed three hours and we arrived just a few minutes before my originally scheduled flight. At least I know better for next time and to avoid Chicago at all costs during the winter!
After running a small setup for ADSB, I decided that it was time to upgrade my antenna to be able to track more planes. The current setup has been in my office for the last two years with a tiny antenna sitting in a window. This was not an optimal setup, but I had a difficult time trying to find the right time to do it and the right products and place to mount it outside. But the last few weeks I decided to pull the trigger.
My traveling has dropped off a bit the last couple of months and I have done a bad job at documenting everything, but I did capture some pictures for my second trip to San Francisco in as many months. I didn’t manage to capture any pictures of the American Airlines CRJ 700 that I took from CMH to ORD since the jet way layout at CMH is not conducive to grabbing pictures especially at gates B22 – B24. But I did manage to get a nice picture of the American Airlines Boeing 737-800 N847NN at ORD which would take us to SFO.
August was a light flying month for me and I only had six flights. I didn’t get on any notable planes, but I did see a couple of cool ones at DFW on my last leg.
First up American Airlines Boeing 787-8 N818AL at DFW. I think this had just come in from CDG.
June was my busiest month of flying to date. I had 15 flights during the month – traveling almost every week. July is shaping up to be just slightly more busy. Instead of putting out all of the pictures from the month, I will just share a few of the highlights during my travels.
During a layover at PHL I saw quite a few American Airlines A330s.
I have probably connected through Chicago O’Hare a dozen or more times in the last few years, but have never actually visited Chicago via the airport. Until now.
First up is United Airlines Embraer ERJ-145 N11539 to take us to Chicago.
This week, I was headed to Memphis for a few days. One of the downsides of traveling from a mid-market to another mid-market is that there are rarely any direct flights, so it usually means connecting and a great risk of delays or cancellations – especially during the spring and summer months. Well, this week I got bit by the delay bug.
