My wife and I went on a peace-keeping mission yesterday by visiting DFW airport to do some plane spotting. She’s actually quite enthusiastic about these trips and, I hate to admit, is better at framing a shot of an airplane than I am. Damn it.

 

We have 4 locations that we often visit. You can see them all on this Google Map.

 

Yesterday, we visited the Temporary Founders’ Plaza location for about 5 minutes to see who was on the northwest freight ramp. We were hoping to spot a China Cargo 747 that was scheduled to take off about 20 minutes after we arrived. We didn’t see that airpane but we did see a UPS 747 on the ramp (a passenger conversion of a 747-200) and a North American Airlines 757 at Terminal B (Braniff’s Old Terminal 2W).

 

We then went to Minter’s Chapel Cemetary located on DFW property on the southwest side of the airport. From here, you can view spectacular take-offs and the occasional aircraft taxiing by. Unfortunately, this location generally offers many different varieties of American Airlines aircraft and very little else.

 

There were 2 particular airplanes we wanted to try to get today. A China Cargo 747-400 and a British Airways 777-200ER that were scheduled to take off. The first was the China Cargo and it never did. I had my laptop connected to the internet via my cell phone but flight in FlightAware.com never changed its schedule and never showed itself as having taken off.

 

After more than hour of photographs, we were leaning against our car in the shade and suddenly my wife asked “What is that airline?” and pointed. Ummm, it was the British Airways 777 we were waiting for. By this time, I had lost the batteries in my camera so she took the photos with OK results. (It was a long, long shot for her camera.)

 

After getting that photo, we decided it was time to pack and leave. As we were putting together our things, I looked to the northwest and saw this rather large aircraft coming in for a landing.

 

Me: “Hey! That looks like a 747 coming in!”
Carolina: “Yup. We aren’t going to miss it like all the other 747s are we?”

 

You see, we have this history of leaving the airport, looking over our shoulders and seeing a 747 coming in for a landing. Not a good history but a history.

 

After landing and taxiing, we discovered it was the China Cargo 747 and was just late arriving so its takeoff clearly was going to be late too.

 

There is some good news. DFW is nearly finished building a NEW Founder’s Plaza (See the Google Map for the location) at a new location that is on the northwest side of the airport. It is nearly adjacent to the UPS freight facility and practically in front of runways 18R and 18L.

 

Here are some selected shots from both this trip and one we took about a month ago. Click Here.

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Right now, I’m not entirely certain which direction this blog will go.  Being an avid fan of the airline business and someone who follows the business daily, I found myself having some opinions.  Being pretty certain that my family no longer wants to hear them, I thought I could write them here.  We’ll see what happens.

 

I said I was an airline business fan which means I’m not an old aircraft fan or a warbird fan.  Mostly I’m a fan of the business and my interest in commercial aircraft comes second to that.   As you can imagine, this is not a hobby that impresses dates.

 

On the header of this blog there are 5 different photographs depicting Braniff International aircraft.  Interestingly enough, 3 of those 5 never served Braniff.  One of those that did never served in Braniff livery.  The one on the far left is a photograph of a Braniff DC-10-10 model and working from left to right the remaining aircraft are a concept of the Boeing 2707 SST in Braniff colors, a model of a Braniff L1011, the Concorde in Braniff livery and, finally, the Alexander Calder Braniff DC-8. 

 

The DC-10, L1011 and B2707 SST never served Braniff.  (Indeed, the B2707 SST never got beyond full size model mockups).  Braniff did operate the Concorde, for a short time, by “sharing” the Concorde with both British Airways and Air France.  The services operated from London and Paris to Dulles Airport (Washington D.C.) and then Braniff flew them with their crews to Dallas.  By the end of the service, tickets on the Concorde from Dallas to Washington D.C. cost a $10 premium over standard first class fares. 

 

The Calder DC-8 is my favorite Braniff aircraft.  Designed by Alexander Calder, this DC-8 served Latin American routes through the 70’s.  It was only very rarely seen in Dallas and I can only recall seeing it once myself when, I believe, it was substituted onto the DFW-HNL (Honolulu) service in place of the regular 747-100 (N601BN).  I last knew of its fate about 4 or 5 years ago when I discovered it was serving an air cargo airline out of Miami.

 

If anyone finds this blog outside of my family, I’ll be impressed.  If you do and you like it, please leave a comment. 

 

Greg

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