Planes and stuff

Yesterday, the guys at Lajes (Terceira, Azores) got the Air Force One, with President Obama on its way to the south America. I remembered getting around here an USAF C-40 with a livery somehow similar to the Air Force One back in 2007 so, decided it was going to be the Photo of the Week but then looked at all the little treasures that I had photographed that day (all now gone), including a Braathen's B737 that I still hadn't processed and published...so Photo of the Week goes for the Braathens... USAF C-40 50730 Another gone pearl...XL Airways (UK) still with the old livery and with a Canadian registration with "Operated by Sunwing" sticker - C-FTAE Photo of the Week: Braathens B737-700 LN-TUI...another gone airline.. And, yet another golden catch (despite the quality...) A Finnair B752 OH-LBO

Back to 2008 (August, 18th) a pic that I still hadn't published in the blog: Which's the only airline in the pic that's still operating? ;) First Choice A320 G-OOPX (now operating for SmartWings as OK-HCB) departing from 05 with a Lauda Air holding short off runway 05. In the back XL (UK) and TAP are in the apron....and I guess no doubts on which is the airline still operating... :)

Recebi esta semana um par de cópias do nº 2306 da Air&Cosmos , uma revista semanal Francesa que utilizou uma das minhas fotos num dos seus artigos. É sem dúvida uma das fotos minhas preferidas, que conjuga uma luz de final de tarde fantástica, com uma placa bem recheada (coisa que já não vemos por cá à tarde, desde há muito....) e com um par de companhias que entretando já fecharam as portas... Para finalizar, o negrume das nuvens acaba por dar um contraste com o solzinho de final de tarde na placa que me agrada bastante... C-GOAF da já extinta XL a taxiar para a 05, com um 737 da também já extinta  Palmair em fundo. Outra nota para o 320 da Sata que ainda ostentava a pintura antiga desta companhia...

Despite de huge amount of traffic of the last days, some of which really nice with a few debuts, I have nothing new to share, so will keep with memories... Found this one on my archives a few days ago. Beside the fighter style turn and "dive" there's a few more points of interest on this movement. Back then, when we had the British Airways colors, the flights were made by GB (later bought by Easyjet) and they used Airbus. A B737 with BA colors was quite rare around here. In this case, it was a rental from XL Airways (or was it still Excel, back then...??)

Last Tuesday ( 19th May ) we had a couple of very rare movements around here. The first was a C40 (B737) from US Navy. Military planes are rare around here, specially US ones so, although this hadn't many differences form any B737 civil airliners, it's allways an interesting catch. Its presence had probably something to do with the scale of USS Nashville at Funchal Port. Went for the afternoon traffic and as I arrived it was getting ready to leave. What a luck. Anyway, its departure was quite delayed as they realised upon cleared for push-back that they had no push-back tow.... I'm guessing that someone forgot to contract one... Finally, after almost 45minuts, they managed to get a tow for the job and linned up on runway 05: Although it has winglets now, the US flag and "United States Navy" were removed, so the plane is visually less actractive... You could notice in the comunications that the crews wasn't used to navigate around here, as they were carefully (...