Michigan Exposures: A Pair of Queens

Friday, October 6, 2017

A Pair of Queens

On Sunday I decided that I wanted to catch the Queen. If rumors prove to be true, I don't have too many more opportunities to do that. Detroit Metro has three incoming 747 flights daily. The first one is from Korea. The second is from Shanghai and the third is from Tokyo. The Shanghai and Tokyo flights are generally about an hour apart.

So first up was the flight from Pudong Airport in Shanghai. This is roughly a 14 hour flight. A couple of weeks ago, they had to split this flight because they were doing some work on the main runway at Detroit Metro.

It's always impressive to see the Queen fly almost overhead.

A 737-800 arrives from Nashville.

I'm not sure if the MD-90 is an endangered species but considering that these planes are approaching 30 years old, it wouldn't be a surprise. This particular one was coming in from Minneapolis.

I kind of like the Spirit Taxi Livery. It gives a bit of color to a bunch of planes with white skin. This plane was also arriving from Minneapolis.

An Embrear 175 arriving from Houston.

Of course there's another plane that I like to catch, and that's the 757. For some reason, I love the looks of these planes. Like I said before, I think it the big engines they have. It makes them look like a puppy in the sky or something. Anyway, this one was arriving from Los Angeles.

I was surprised to catch the next plane. It was an AeroMexico 737. This particular one was arriving from Mexico City. I wish more airlines would do the bare metal look.

Another 757 comes in from Orlando.

The 737 is another design that has been around forever. The first 737 was introduced in 1966 and of course there have been several upgrades since then. This is the 737-900 and was arriving from San Francisco. One thing I like about this plane is that it looks pretty sleek.

Shortly after the last 737 was this one belonging to American Airlines. This was coming in from Dallas.

N953DN was an MD-90 that was flying in from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

And this MD-88 was coming from New Orleans.

Jack the Rabbit is an Airbus 320 that belongs to Frontier Airlines. This particular one was coming in from Denver.

I thought that I read somewhere that American Airlines had retired all of their MD-80's but evidently this one was saved from the boneyard. It was arriving from O'Hare.

A CRJ-700 makes the short treak from Kalamazoo.

And this Airbus 320 was coming in from New Orleans.

I know I'm having a good planewatching day when I see more than one 757. This particular one was arriving from the City of Tampa. Fun fact, if the name were geographically correct the Tampa Bay Buccaneers would actually be playing in the water. The City is Tampa and the bay is Tampa Bay.