Tuesday, April 3, 2007

British Airways Concorde




When I worked for Delta Airlines at DFW in the late 1980s, we handled the ground operations for British Airways flights into and out of DFW.

For ten weeks each summer, British Airways flew the Concorde on a London - Washington D.C. - Dallas route. It was there three days per week.

I took my trusty Canon AE-1 to work one day and took about half a roll of film of them pulling the Concorde to the gate. The plane was so loud, that because of noise abatement regulations, the mechanics would take the big tractor you see in the photos out on a taxiway so the pilots could go ahead and shut down the engines out there. It was then pulled to the gate.

One thing that I hate, is that for most of my life I was incredibly shy about taking photos of people and always scared I was in an area that wouldn't allow cameras, that I let it paralyze me. Consequently, I don't have many photos from my work at DFW, when I could have gotten lots of cool shots of planes and my former coworkers.

Canon AE-1 with Tokina 35-105mm lens. I think these were on Ektachrome. I mainly used Kodachrome 64, but had started using Ektachrome by this time as well. These don't have that magenta tint that Kodachrome slides usually have. That, and I'm too lazy to get the slides back out and look at the slide mount.

11 comments:

Chica, Cienna, and Cali said...

cools shots and a pity that u ddint take more.....i to am shy with ppl and taking their pics..somehow i can never muster enuf courage to take their pics w/out asking them and if i ask, then the candor of the pic is lost!!!
i loved the last shot where one plane is on ground while the other one in the background is in the air.....I think u can put some shots in the large size...as it helps viewers to appreciate them better, my 2 cents!! :)

Tim Rice said...

Impressive plane photos!

JAM said...

Thanks moi, Tim.

Moi, when I put them on the blog large, it messes up the spacing of the blog. Each one can be clicked on to enlarge it separately for a better view.

photowannabe said...

Fascinating shots of the Concorde. This is an interesting series.

Anna said...

Very cool shots! I checked the image and I can see it...sorry that you arent seening. Let me know if that continues!

Thanks for visiting me! :)

Anonymous said...

Great shots of an impressive plane. Boy would I like to have seen that. More than that I would have liked to have ridden on it, but I understand it is or was very expensive.

Thanks for sharing these.

Chad Oneil Myers said...

Wow, man! Impressive photos!

CG said...

These are amazing shots!! Great perespective; you really capture the plane's beauty.

JAM said...

Thanks everyone. The Concorde's "cool factor" was off the scale. I hated it when they finally grounded them all.

We got to go inside it one day before they boarded the passengers, and the inside was surprisingly small. About the interior room of a modern MD80. But there were only 100 seats, decent sized and all leather. It was classy, but small inside.

John Roberts said...

Something else we have in common: I had a Tokina 35-105 for my Minolta X-570. It was my "normal" lens and stayed on the camera 905 of the time.

John Roberts said...

That's 90% of the time.