In the times of Covid-One Nine....

I suspect that there are blogs all over the world that are being resurrected and why not be one of them.  These times are definitely trying, I look daily at Fort Lauderdale air space, and I see probably 10% of what normally is in the area during a day.

The last few years however, have been a place of changes.  Silver Airways has started to replace their Saab SF340's with ATR's both -42 and -72 variants.   The -72 I was lucky to catch on it's delivery flight that routed from France, through the Azores to the Caribbean and finally to Fort Lauderdale.

Spirit has also been taking delivery of a lot of it's new A320Neo's while a lot of the A321Ceos have been arriving as well.

One of the bigger changes that has been happening as well has been the arrival of the JetBlue A321Neo LR's that will form the backbone of their European operations last in 2021.

When operations were beginning to slow down due to the virus, air Transat started to send in bigger planes to repatriate people back to Canada, and one of those was the 30 Year Anniversary jet.

I will definitely be adding more of the goings on the past few years soon.....

The goings on.....

Well, finally I get back to the goings on...

First, the camera melt down.  For the past few years, I have been using a trust Nikon D300.  This has been a workhorse of a camera and has taken many great pictures in all genre's that I have shot.  For the past few months though, once in a while, the shutter has started to stick and it's annoying as it would take ages to unstick, despite turning the camera off and on, and hitting the shooting button.  On the recent Southwest inaugural that I did to Montego Bay, it got decidedly worse and worse during the day, so much so that I switched back to my D200 to complete the weekend.  After calling around some repair places, it was finally established that it needed a new shutter - it had in it's life taken just under 110,000 pictures.  However, the cost of the shutter repair was excessive, so instead, I invested in a used D300S with only 3,000 shots on the shutter and am finally working with that.  In between, my D200 stood up well to the task - it still has a lot of use in it, so a great backup camera.

So, what has happened in the past year.  In February, we had our annual aviation photographer convention at Miami and Fort Lauderdale, that allowed me to get some new previously unshot subjects.

Firstly, Miami

 

  

Then Fort Lauderdale

Fort Lauderdale's weather has been not the best all year - ther heat haze has been amazing, the rains have been persistent and as we got towards summer, fewer and fewer shooting days were available.  However, there were some great days once in a while to get some great shots of new stuff.

As noted before, British Airways inaugurated service to Fort Lauderdale from Gatwick and that was a special day to enjoy.

As the weather got worse in the summer, so did the new things, including the Southwest -700's that have been getting their scimitar winglets, but, this was in bad weather....

And then there has been the ever search for special schemes, the one I really wanted, the new JetBlue NYPD dedication aircraft, which finally happened lately.

So, as I get more adjusted to the new camera, hopefully, there will be more and more new shots from behind the camera lens...

Neglectful of blog..

I have been very neglectful of my blog the last few months I know- there have been a lot of things on the go.  I will hopefully get back to it all soon, but in the meantime, British Airways started service in the past week from Gatwick to Fort Lauderdale - this was the arrival picture.

More to come soon - including a camera melt down.....

This is NOT a political statement

It is however a picture of a plane on a campaign trail.  I have been trying to get a decent shot of this unique color scheme for a little while - it has been in and out of Fort Lauderdale a few times, but at one time I managed to get decent weather for a departure....again - this is NOT a political statement...just wanted to state that...

Old Airline - New Planes

Most people are aware of low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines with their bold yellow "insert your own descriptive comment here" aircraft.  With their fleet renewal taking place, there have been a lot of deliveries over the past year, in particular their sharklet-equipped Airbus A321s.

The past week however, has seen them venturing into the brand new with the delivery of their first two A320NEO's.  The largest generation of the A320 family with brand new Pratt & Whitney PurePower PW1100G-JM engines, the latest in geared turbofan engine technology was initially ordered back in 2011 with the purchase of 45 aircraft.

I was lucky to be able to see the arrival of the second aircraft, N902NK which got to Spirit's Fort Lauderdale home base on October 14.  The first thing I will say is how much quieter the new engines area on approach.  Still a "Yellow Taxi Cab" to me, but still nice to see.  Both aircraft will start their commercial life in the coming week,

Some more time spent behind the camera lens....

On This Day - We Never Forget!!

Another special scheme crossed off the list....

I have bene tracking this one since it first came out - Westjet's Disney scheme.  For as long as it has been around, I have missed it for a variety of reasons.  However, Sunday, September 3, turned out to be different.  I'd noticed a post on a Facebook group in the morning that it was due in and managed to get everything  that I needed to get done done in plenty of time.   Got the the airport, set up in plenty of time, and fortunately, the clear skies held for it's arrival.

While there, I managed to get another first - a couple of the new Delta A321's and a pretty rare United A319.  All in all, a nice bit of time spent with my son getting some nice aircraft...

Some more time spent behind the (BIG!!!) camera lens!!