It’s Better To Be Lucky Than Good Sometimes

One of my favorite shooting locations is the Gazebo area next to the General Aviation facility at Phoenix-Gateway Airport outside Phoenix.  Phoenix-Gateway, of course, used to be Williams AFB (or as we like to call it, “Willy”) where the major attractions are the three very long runways which make it a handy destination for a wide variety of aircraft. 

 The only scheduled operations are flown by Allegiant Airlines but there are many charter flights, flight academies, transient military and even the occasional testbed aircraft.  Boeing brought one of their new 747-8F airframes to Willy last week and it was the subject of much interest by both casual airplane buffs and the more dedicated aviation followers and photographers like myself. 

Now aviation test programs move to the beat of their own drum.  You don’t often know where these airframes will go, when they will arrive, when they will fly test hops or when they’ll depart for a different facility.  We try to keep tabs on Boeing via Flightaware (this particular visit was tagged with tail number BOE522) but often, flight plans get filed but then not flown or are significantly delayed.  

This particular day, BOE522 was slated for a 4pm MST departure and was scheduled for a flight of about an hour and a half in duration.  There were probably a dozen or so people hanging around eagerly anticipating the scheduled flight but as the minutes dragged on with no movement on the far side of the airport, people began to shuffle their feet, look at their watches and decide that they had better things to do.  Me?  I was going to stick around for a while.  

At around 4:30pm, the rotating beacon came on but still, there was no movement.  This is how things remained for about the next hour and a half when finally she called ground for clearance to taxi.  Yep, we were going to get  a show after all!  

Here then is the takeoff sequence I was fortunate to capture as the only photographer on hand as BOE522 lifted off from Runway 30 Center on September 1, 2010:  

Just Reaching Rotation

Positive Rate

Climb Attitude Established

Everything Looking Good

Gear Up and Turning Out

Beautiful Sight in the Arizona Sunset

 It was a wonderful and rare privilege to see this giant break the surly bonds and rise into the gathering dusk.  I only wish they’d kept to their original schedule as that would have given me a chance to capture her return as well.  As with all good things, this visit came to an end all too soon as BOE522 departed Willy and headed on to other facilities en route to FAA certification and commercial use as a freighter.