The season has gone so quickly.....

I just realized the last time I updated my blog was back in October - and - it is two days before Christmas - that's a heck of a time to neglect it. I will say that there have been a lot of circumstances that have distracted me over the last couple of months, but, in the meantime, I have had some time to shoot, and here are some of the best of this time. The Canadian visitors have really started fairly late, with Sunwing only starting in the last couple of weeks, Canjet doing the same, but Air Transat and Westjet (special below) starting quite a bit earlier.

This Westjet special scheme had been just a wish - Westjet hadn't brought the -800 series into Ft Lauderdale in all the time I have been shooting here. But, for the beginning of the season, they changed their schedule, and one particular lunch time, out came this beauty. There is a story to this shot too - it was a cloudy day (not evident from the picture, but to the south of the airport - a lot of clouds) - and when I first saw this, I thought- no chance with the clouds. But - there was one ray of sun that shone through the clouds. The plane stayed in that ray all the way down Taxiway Charlie to the end - and - at the end of the taxiway, the Captain even waved. Now - I'd like to think the Captain saw us photographers at the end and stayed in that ray just for us - now - if it wasn't that - well, I'm not going to think about that - but - I'm thankful for the wave - these Westjet crews are always friendly.

I've been searching for this US Airways special scheme for the longest time - this is the last of the special schemes on US Airways A319's that I hadn't got. Thank you US Airways for replacing one of the Boeing 737-400's flights with the A319 - it's brought back a lot of the special schemes.

Of course, a couple of days later, the Star Alliance scheme came taxiing out.

The early morning light on some days has been wonderful as well. I haven't been able to catch a UPS Being 757 in ages - the last one was in Fort Myers a few years ago - so it was great to be able to catch this one in some lovely early morning light on it's way back to Louisville.

Frontier had brought the A319 to Ft Lauderdale for all except a couple of flights in the past years. This year however, the lunchtime arrival has been the A320 - giving us photographers a whole new range of their great tails for our photography pleasure. This one, one of my favorites - the bald eagle.

This jetBlue A320 - I love New York - is alwayts a welcome sight at any airport - but - in the glorious Florida Fall light, it really is a great picture.

Delta's SkyTeam colors are also a great sight at most airports. Since Delta have pulled the Boeing 737-800 flights, there hasn't been a chance to get that version of the SkyTeam colors, but fortunately, with the domestic SkyTeam (below - N659DL) and the international colored aircraft, we are lucky to get them once in a while.

The one European international scheduled flight is Condor with their Boeing 767-300ER's that come in on Friday afternoons. I'd caught one of these before when on a Frankfurt-Cancun flight, the headwinds had caused them to stop for fuel, but, this is the first time that I'd managed to catch one of the scheduled flights - Snoopy and Woodstock in their glory on the side as well.

They have been late in starting this year, but Sunwing will hopefully have all different types of hybrid schemes this season - I know there is a yellow painted aircraft around, but so far in the season, we have only seen the regular Sunwing colors and the blue British-registered Thompson Fly hybrids - still a long time in the season though.

It's two days before Christmas and a little bird whispered in my ear that there is a special in Ft Lauderdale for the Xmas - I'm not going to reveal what it is at the moment - just in case it has already left, but if I can get it on Christmas Eve, I will be sharing it here.

While I've been lucky to spend some time behind the camera lens, I still would like to wish my readers a wonderful, peaceful and very safe Holiday Season...