Photo: Pushing Off, Pouring Down

I recently had cause to sit around in Ottawa's airport, waiting for a flight to bring me back to Toronto--a day before last month's floods, incidentally, so in retrospect I'm glad I was able to come back when I did. The conditions in Ottawa certainly foreshadowed what would hit Toronto the next day, with constant grey rain--nevertheless, the planes must still go in and out. Here, a Porter Airlines Q400 is pushed away from the terminal, and I have to wonder if the ground crew is being paid enough to put up with it all.

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Photo: Nose to Nose

Everyone remembers the F-14. After all those aerial sequences in Top Gun, how could we not? Though the Tomcat has been phased out by the U.S. Navy, leaving those ones shipped to Iran just before that late-1970s unpleasantness as the only ones in active service, it's not hard to find them on display across the United States. This one sits on the grounds of Seattle's Museum of Flight, and mostly gets rained on.

It looks a lot less menacing from this angle, I think.


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Photo: That's What I Call Super

Among the planes that now rest in the Airpark annex of the Museum of Flight just outside Seattle, Washington, you'll find a Lockheed Super Constellation wearing the colors of Trans-Canada Airlines, which evolved into today's Air Canada. The Super Constellation was one of the first airliners to take to the skies after the Second World War, and it was a fixture of air travel in the 1950s before the Jet Age really got in gear. This plane wasn't open to the public when I visited, unlike Air Force One and the Concorde, but the pictures I've seen speak of an old, vanished style that stands in stark contrast to what you'd find today.


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Photo: Wheels Up From the Water

Although planes from Vancouver Harbour Water Airport only fly to Whistler and a few destinations on Vancouver Island, it can be a busy place nevertheless - seaplanes accelerating across the waves, landing with a thrash of whitewater and the roar of engines being throttled back, leaving the city and mountains behind. Last weekend I caught a Harbour Air seaplane picking up some speed as it buzzed by Canada Place - enough that even in the fraction of a second the shutter was open, the plane moved enough that the spinning blades of the propellor left afterimages of themselves.


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Photo: Unfreezing the Wing

There was a slight delay on the ground when I found myself flying to New Brunswick in November; after all, even in Vancouver it tends to get cold in winter, and to make sure the ailerons didn't freeze up during the middle of the flight and so on, YVR ran the plane through de-icing before we were allowed to leave. It's the first time I've had the chance to see it in operation, spraying deicing fluid down.


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The Developing Country and the Heavenly Palace

Some people spend their whole lives looking for the right excuse; a few simple words that give them a free pass to do whatever they want to do. It's equally true of countries looking to justify their own policies, and I can't think of any state that falls back on this kind of "excuse politics" more than the People's Republic of China. It's simple as excuses go, but it keeps appearing again and again: China is a developing nation. Therefore, China can do whatever the hell it wants and feels free to ignore any kind of environmental regulations, because it is a developing nation and is still building its economy.

I most recently encountered China falling back on this excuse in the context of the European Union's new carbon fees for airlines flying to European airports, a project that has also drawn vociferous opposition from airlines like Delta and Qantas because, boo-hoo, won't someone think of the airlines' profit margins? The Guardian reports that China's position is that "it is unreasonable for Europe to apply its policies to developing nations, which are still at the stage of rapid expansion of their airline industries and so find it difficult to cut overall emissions."

Most developing countries don't have four national airlines flying to Europe, and ultimately, the decision on what airlines fly to Europe is Europe's, not China's - and if Air China, China Eastern, China Southern, or Hainan Airlines don't want to pay the EU's carbon fees, I'm sure that other Asian ones like Cathay Pacific or Singapore Airlines will. Nevertheless, this is just the latest appearance of China's favorite excuse, and the latest reminder that the Chinese leadership apparently considers itself to have absolutely no responsibility at all for its current and future pollution path.

How dare you suggest this airline should pay for the externalities that its operations create! Why, next you'll want mining companies to finance the remediation of exhausted lands themselves, too!

Facts change quickly, though. Twenty years ago, maybe even ten years ago, China was unarguably a developing nation, but its breakneck development pace threatens to undercut its arguments. You may recall that back in September, China launched Tiangong 1 into orbit to serve as a testbed and demonstrator for its planned space station, and last week it reiterated its plan to undertake a crewed moon landing in the 2020s.

You'd think a developing country would have more important things to do with its money, like ensuring its major cities aren't drowning in choking clouds of smog that make 1970s Los Angeles look like a day at the park - but no. While its goal of lifting the Chinese population out of poverty is one that should be pursued, its method of pursuing it works at cross-purposes; with every day that passes, the strain on China's own environment becomes greater. It seems to me that a country in China's situation should have more important things to focus on than whether its airlines are making as much money as they can possibly make, or how much prestige it can earn in the international arena by putting boots on the moon.

That's just it, though. I seriously doubt that the Chinese government actually cares about the Chinese people in anything but an abstract sense; rather, I imagine that its priority is squarely the strengthening of China, with millions of people reduced to little counters in the game the Politburo plays. China's cooperation is essential for any developmental trajectory that would see the end of the twenty-first century better off than the beginning of it, but that cooperation will likely be hard to come by as long as it keeps beating its "developing" drum.

Photo: Fly By Night

Forget what I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how Air Canada doesn't run a flight monopoly - in some cities, this actually is the case. Case in point: Fredericton International Airport in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where all regularly scheduled flights are run by Air Canada Express, connecting it to Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax. I was through there this weekend, arriving and departing in the deep darkness. Pictured here is C-FFJA, a CRJ200 regional jet that ran the 5:30 AM flight to Toronto Pearson, the airport's first flight of the day - and aside from a completely dark Dash 8 at the other end of the field, it was the sole and solitary aircraft there.

Been a while since I've boarded a plane without going by jetway.

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Photo: There From Almost Everywhere

There are some cities that it seems everyone wants to go to, and one way to tell is to look at the airlines that fly into its airport. Los Angeles International Airport is one such place; it's the fifth-busiest in the world, and planes fly there from every continent in the world except Africa and Antarctica. When I left there in December 2009, I managed to take this shot during the early stages of takeoff that shows the variety of airlines that drop their wheels at LAX; from the left there are planes from TACA Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Korean Air, EVA Air, and Air Tahiti Nui - that last one is an uncommon find, since LAX is the only place in North and South America where it lands. As for the last one, the small one - I have no idea what airline that is.

Incidentally, this talk of planes and airlines reminds me that even seventeen years after its initial release, Aerobiz Supersonic for the Super Nintendo remains an excellent game.

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Flying the Flag Ragged

If things in May had gone a bit different, and the map of Canada hadn't been painted quite so blue, Air Canada's flight attendants could well be on strike right now. Whether or not the situation would have hashed out the same way is an academic, but if Canada had continued to be run by a hamstrung minority government the same way it had been since 2006, my own suspicion is that the government would have stood back and let it happen, if only to keep the Liberals and NDP from making noise and possibly precipitating yet another election.

However, this is the world in which the Conservatives have a majority, and so much like Chretien's Liberals from 1993 to 2001, what the Opposition does is irrelevant; they don't have enough bodies to throw into the gears of government. So, as the Vancouver Sun reported on Wednesday, there was really nothing preventing Labour Minister Lisa Raitt from asking the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to take a look at the proposed contract that's the source of the acrimony between the flight attendants and Air Canada management - "to determine whether a disruption of service would pose a health and safety risk to the public," and while that investigation is going on, Air Canada is obligated to continue services "to the extent necessary to prevent an immediate and serious danger to the safety or health of the public."

Which means, in simple English, no strike for you.

I don't like the idea of governments involving themselves in labor disputes, outside of very narrow areas. For issues like transit strikes, like the one the Toronto Transit Commission held back in 2008, I can understand the necessity of government intervention; Toronto as a city literally could not run without its public transit system, and police, fire, and EMS departments provide services so critical that a universal, sustained job action on their part would mean that people would die - but there are ways to square the circle in these cases, to undertake a job action without putting people at risk.

I think most people would agree that Air Canada flight attendants are not in quite the same position as police, fire, and EMS services. No one will die if they don't get their miniature can of pop or package of Bits and Bites at 35,000 feet. Yet, nevertheless, the federal government feels compelled to ride to Air Canada's rescue, to yet again prop up an airline that's built itself with so many tax dollars, it shouldn't rightly be considered a private company.

It would be ridiculous if it wasn't so transparent.

An Air Canada Airbus A321 is ready to take on baggage at Toronto Pearson International Airport in December 2009.

Here's what I think - the Conservatives, flush with a sense of power now that they have the majority they'd been chasing for five years, want to make an example of the Air Canada flight attendants. Remember the postal strike a few months ago? That dragged on seemingly for weeks, and any back-to-work legislation would have needed Opposition support. Well, it's a different world now. What was once an issue between the employer and the workers has now been complicated by the government, that organization that's supposed to represent the interest of all the people, taking sides and standing back-to-back with management.

The Conservatives can spin whatever rhetoric they want about this, but that's all it is - rhetoric. Legislating an essential service back to work, whether or not it's officially called that, is one thing - this is entirely another. Flight attendants do not represent an essential service in that sense of the term. The planes can still be loaded, fueled, and flown. The government has no business sticking its nose into this. The idea that a suspension of Air Canada services would pose a "pose a health and safety risk" to the public is ludicrous - I'm sure WestJet would have loved the opportunity to fill the gap. I have thus far been unable to find an airport where the only scheduled flights are flown by Air Canada; thankfully, our national flag carrier does not monopolize the friendly skies.

I suppose the Conservatives really are friendly to business, all right. From their conduct we can infer that they're also hostile to the workers who make those business work.

Photo: Wings From the Jet Age

From Mad Men to Pan Am, it seems like the '60s are becoming cool again. I can understand why; even though it was a highly unpleasant time for vast swathes of society, the age also carried with it a transformative, optimistic culture that is dearly, sorely needed in this overcast twenty-first century. Looking back, it's easy to see the Jet Age as a time that was polished, refined, and poised on the edge of everything: a time when everything was possible.

The Boeing 707 was the jet of the Jet Age. It was on such a jet that my grandfather and immediate family first came to Canada in that long, hot summer of 1969. They flew BOAC, the British Overseas Airways Corporation, one of two airlines that was merged to form British Airways in 1974. We still have the original paper ticket from that flight forty-two years ago, so I can say that as of July 15, 1969, a round-trip flight from Manchester to Toronto - with a stopover in Montreal on both legs - cost $340.00; that works out to $2,092.04 in 2011 dollars. Today, the same round-trip ticket costs $1,113; of course, that's without any taxes, and it's also for one person. I guess the Jet Age may have been a bit cheaper after all.

Photographed is a BOAC 707 on the ground at Toronto International Airport on August 18, 1969.

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Photo: Buzzing the Tower

One strange thing I noticed during my time in San Francisco was how many helicopters seemed to be in the sky at any given time. While I went through the Presidio there was one Sheriff's department chopper that I could've sworn was following me at first - presumably because I lack the implants common in Americans that are used to determine how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll - but it turned out to just be doing really wide circles over the area. There was also what I believe to be a UH-60 Black Hawk doing a few passes over the Golden Gate - whether it was a training flight, a patrol, or something else entirely, I have no idea.


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Photo: The Roar of the Rotors

Vancouver Harbour is a busy place. Beyond all the cruise ships and container ships that come to unload tourists and load up exports, respectively, it's also a fairly significant water aerodrome, dominated by floatplanes that serve smaller communities along the British Columbia coast and on the islands. There's also a passenger heliport, from which the helicopter airline Helijet makes regular passenger runs between Vancouver and Victoria.

Yesterday, I caught C-GHJL, one of Helijet's five S-76A Spirits, just as it began to take off. The sound of the rotors seemed to be echoing off every wall that faced the water.

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Photo: Wings Above the Water

While at Canada Place the other day, I caught this Harbour Air DHC-3 Otter descending into Vancouver Harbour Water Airport - its floats hit the waves about a second or so after this picture was taken. I didn't realize until I was preparing this to go live that the zoom is so good, and the plane so close already, that you can actually make out the wristwatch that the pilot is wearing. Unless that's just one of those really annoying bands of shadow.

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Photo: Lufthansa Approaching

Part of the trick of spotting planes is being there at the right place and time; unless you plan it out beforehand, for an airport like Vancouver International, you're likely to get mostly Air Canada and WestJet flights. Sometimes sheer luck enters into it, though. While biking across Lulu Island yesterday, my route took me right near the airport's approach path - and while at No. 5 Road and Westminster Highway, I caught Lufthansa Flight 492 running D-AIHB "Bremerhaven," an A340-642, descending after a long flight from Frankfurt.

I tell you, those engines put out a hell of a lot of sound.

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Photo: Planes Beneath the Mountains

I've been getting an anomalous number of hits today by people searching Bing for "Vancouver International Airport" - I can't explain why, because this weblog doesn't show up in at least the first two results pages - but I figured why not, if people are looking for things related to YVR, I'll provide!

I took this particular shot last time I was down there, looking across the field toward the North Shore Mountains. I wasn't expecting to find that American Airlines plane there; that line's not a common visitor to YVR, only flying from here to Dallas/Fort Worth, though for a while planes on that route did have a tendency to overfly my apartment in New Westminster, loud and low around 10 AM, during final approach. Behind it is one of the countless Air Canada flights that depart from here, and in front is a Horizon Air turboprop that could be bound either for Portland or Seattle.

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I Have An Incredible Deal For You

My brain is rather empty this morning, so I'm not going to fulminate on anything today. Rather, I thought I'd offer a bit of a reward for those of you who have been reading my wordpiles for as long as you have. It's another one of those things I came across in a box!

Yes, really, if you can believe it - $5 off on any Wardair flight! Don't you want to go to Winnipeg? West Palm Beach? Barbados? Well, here's your chance! Go for it!

Presuming, of course, that you also have some kind of time machine. By the time this coupon was a year expired, Wardair didn't exist - folded into Canadian Airlines, which itself no longer exists.

Photo: Korean Air and the Crow

Between yesterday's and tomorrow's posts on suburbs, I thought I'd use today to get as far away from it as I could - or above it all, come to that, as it'd be appropriate. I only wish the sky had been more generally blue yesterday morning, instead of the washed-out off-white you get when sun and cloud mix.

Regardless. Pictured today is Korean Air Flight 71 on final approach into Vancouver International Airport from Seoul-Incheon, operating a Boeing 777-200. It's easy to be specific in this regard because there's only one Korean Air flight coming into Vancouver in the morning. This was taken yesterday from the Queensborough Bridge.

The crow - if that is a crow, I think it is - was entirely unexpected.

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Photo: Lens Flare Ahoy

I'm surprised this photo turned out, so close to the sun; my old camera probably would have been overwhelmed by the light, but my new one was capable enough to just make lens flares. Here, I've caught a Bombardier CRJ200 flying for US Airways Express descending into Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on the sort of blue sky day that's common for the desert in January.

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Photo: Handlin' that Baggage

In the course of my travels, luggage transfer is always one of those things that's been dealt with invisibly; you put your tagged bag on the conveyor belt, and then hours later you grab it from the carousel wherever it is that you were headed - unless you don't tip the baggage handler, in which case it will be in Honolulu. In between the beginning and the end - it's rare you have a chance to see it.

Just after my plane had pushed away from its gate at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, I caught this AeroMéxico Connect Embraer ERJ 145 at the next gate over loading luggage, getting ready for its own flight to Hermosillo.

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Photo: Southwest Sun

Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport is a rather busy place, mostly attributable to the Southwest Airlines and US Airways flights that seem to be constantly arriving from every point in the United States and occasionally beyond. If you can find a good spot in the airport's landing pattern, like downtown Tempe or the southern extremes of Papago Park, you can watch a new plane descend almost every minute. The job of an air traffic controller at PHX must be a non-stop one.

I was near the intersection of Priest and Washington when I tracked a Southwest 737 across the sky. It's not quite silhouetted against the sun, but I think it works even so. All part of the charm.

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