Under The Flight Path

I suspect an awful lot of “normal” folks don’t even bother to look up when a plane goes overhead, especially at 12,000 feet and climbing.

I’m not “normal.” (This should be news to just about zero of you.)

As mentioned before, we’re under a couple of the LA area flight paths. Coming out of LAX to parts on opposite sides of the planet, we get the big jets going to Asia and Europe climbing out right over us. When I was out saying hello to the juncos and the squirrels I heard the rumble of this guy, whipped out the phone, set the camera to max telephoto, and took a few shots just to see if the pictures might be decent.

(Images from FlightRadar.com app)

Well, it’s headed to Frankfurt, was at 12,030 feet as he went over, and my photo’s good enough to see the logo on the tail, so that doesn’t suck.

Of course, two seconds after I put the phone back in my pocket this guy comes tearing over, headed toward Runway 8 at Burbank. Normally we get tons of 737s going in with the occasional business jet or light plane. This nice mid-sized twin was novel, but I caught him a little bit past the overhead point. Still…

Look at that flight path! (The green line.) He’d been doing laps all over the San Fernando Valley, and it’s an FAA owned plane. I wonder what was up?

Oh, and if anyone wins a reasonably sized lottery and is just dying to spend some of that money on me, a Beech Super King Air like this one would be a wonderful surprise for Christmas! (Hint, hint…)