From: Airline Pilot friend
Subject: Notes for 1004
Hi Jack,
Just finishing up 1004, I have some observations.
As for temporarily mothballed airliners, I've noticed that their numbers are decreasing in some places. In PDX, since this spring, runway 3/21 has been used as a parking lot and was filled with Alaska Airlines aircraft and some United as well, from the intersection with 10L and south all the way to the departure end. However, in the last month, the number of aircraft parked there has been significantly reduced. I've included pics from both PDX on May 22 and SBD (San Bernadino) which in addition to it being a permanent boneyard, is also a temporary one except for the MadDogs in this pic which is now permanent.
An interesting thing about SBD. Due to the airfield being snuggled up to the mountains to the Northeast. For large aircraft, you land on RWY 6 and depart on 24. So one way in and one way out...which is the perfect metaphor for all those "retired" aircraft.
You also talked about all the Thunderstorms near ICT. On Jul 2 in the late evening, we happened to be flying east over ICT at 390 to top some storms. I was just gonna take a picture of the ICT airport depiction for Dave as I sometimes do for friends as a way to say hello. Even though we were above and to the side of the storms it was throwing off a bunch of turbulence that you can see from the pic it was hard to keep Dave in focus.
Haven't been a regular listener in the last few years...I'm glad to have UCAP back in the rotation.
-- A Friend
