I cannot help it, I love airplanes! I love seeing them take off and land, and most surprisingly, while others do not look forward to the flights to Greece, I eagerly anticipate them! Why? Because to me there is no such feeling in the world from the moment you take off and slip the surly bonds of earth and soar above the clouds and you see all around you the bluest of blue skies. The feeling is one of immense freedom. For those hours, I am in heaven.
Now there's a plane that shoots first and asks questions later, not to mention never taking "no" for an answer. The one and only Concorde, flown by both British Airways and Air France, has been setting records and exceeding all performance superlatives ever since being introduced in 1976. On a sad note, though, this photo was taken only days after the Air France tragedy that claimed 116 lives, and shortly after this photo was taken, British Airways has gounded the entire Concorde fleet after it's airworthiness certificate was revoked. Still no word on when this magnificant bird will take to the skies again.
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has in my opinion one of the nicest livieries of any airline that I have ever seen. I just love that mixture of blue and white, symbolic of the sky and the clouds. Here is a KLM Boeing 767-300 backing out of the gate at London Heathrow airport terminal 4 bound for Amsterdam, Netherlands. A flight of perhaps an hour's duration at best. This picture was taken during the trip home as the flight from Athens was pulling into the gate.
The newest Bad Boy on the block!!! The Boeing 777-200 was launched in 1995 with United Airlines and British Airways serving as the launch customers. It is primarily with this aircraft that BA will retire it's aging fleet of Boeing 747-100/200 "classics", as this aricraft has better performance characteristics, a totally electronic flight deck, and added passenger capacity and range. This pic was taken again after the flight from Athens has touched down and before we pulled into the gate where I took the previous KLM shot. Also of note, the livery is a pin off of an old British flag that will replace the older gray/blue livery and those tacky "World Images" designs that succeeded it. I love the brighter white and softer blue. Also, note those General Electric GE-90 engines. At their widest point, they can fit an entire 737! Don't get too close...
My favorite airplane has got to be the Boeing 747. Here we see three of them along the right side of the photograph, the middle one is the one we just got off of after a 7 hour, 5 minute flight from Chicago that was our first leg of Greece 2000. We are in the terminal building heading toward the flight connections security checkpoint. Along the left you can see a KLM 767 along with a BA 777 in the old livery. If you notice in the center there appears to be a plane taxiing towards us, as it turns out, that plane would take us on the second leg of our journey from London to Athens a mere two hours later.