Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Waiting on a Lady

I decided that I wanted to see more of the Yankee Lady, so I decided to look up its flight schedule.  I found out that they were flying her tonight.  It was a nice enough night, so I headed over to Willow Run after work to catch her.
 The flights were at 4:00, 5:00 and 6:00.  I ended up heading to the south part of the airport first in the hopes of catching her coming in.  That didn't happen.  So I decided to head over to the other side of the airport but I missed the Yankee Lady on her takeoff.  I didn't want to take a chance of missing her, so I just stayed where I was because I figured she had one more flight tonight.
I was hoping that I would catch the 5:00 flight as it was coming and then catching the 6:00 flight as it took off.  It didn't quite work out that way for me.  The first plane that I saw was a Hawker 800 business jet.  I'm pretty sure that I've posted on a Hawker on here before.  This particular one was taking off for Pontiac.
 Next up was a Cessna 182.  This one was headed towards Lansing.
 This was a Cessna Citation business jet headed for Pontiac.
 As I looked at FlightAware, I saw that there would be a DC-9 taking off.  I figured this would be a good consolation prize.
 It turns out that this plane has a pretty interesting history in that it's been through a few airlines in its day.  In July of 1967 it was delivered from the Douglas Long Beach facility to Continental Airlines.  Five years later it was sold to Air Canada.  In September of 1977, it was sold to Air Florida.  In 1984, it was converted to a cargo carrier and sold to Purolator Courier.
 In 1987, it was sold to Emery Worldwide Airlines.  It served there for 8 years when it was sold to Kitty Hawk Airlines.  It October of 2000, it found its way to Reliant Airlines.
 In 2002, it was sold to its current owners and given new engines.
 I was at the airport for the hour and trying to keep an eye on the Yankee Lady.  It didn't seem like she was moving anywhere.  She must have used the DC-9 as a distraction because as I was heading back to the car, I saw that she was on her take off roll.
 I was happy to catch her because I didn't think that it would happen.
 And one more shot as she passed by.  I was thinking about sticking around to catch her landing but I wanted to catch the evening Wolverines.
As I was waiting for the Wolverine, I looked up and got a better picture of the Cessna Citation from earlier.

No comments: