My Best Aviation Pix pg 8

My Best Aviation Photos Eye Candy - # Eight	Bob Bogash

ORD

B-47 - BFI

CV-990

First Flight out of Renton

Brand new Korean 777-300 at PAE

KAL 777-200 approaching SEA - Aircraft HL7526

HL7526 has been retired since I took this picture,
and is now destined to become a restaurant in Seoul.

On her way to her new home.
Well, better than being scrapped.
Thanks to my friend Rob Campbell, who used to fly this airplane, for the info.

Airbus A319 - Syracuse

PAE
Not too many DC-9-10 Series left in service. But this one is!
Showing a revenue flight on Flight Aware 20 Aug 2024.
Line number 156, a -15F/-15RC - she's over 57 years old.
Started with Continental, then Air Canada, Air Florida and myriad other operators.
Been with Ameristar over 20 years. Flies frequently.
Click here for her long history.

PAE

Reeve Aleutian

Reeve Aleutian was a historic pioneer Alaskan airline, founded in 1946 by Bob Reeve. Like so many airlines of the period, he began with the purchase of dirt cheap war surplus airplanes, in this case C-47s. His initial ops were to Seattle:

Each trip carried a full load of 21 passengers and took an average of 9+1⁄2 hours. In 53 days, 26 round trips were made. Reeve would work all night on inspections and maintenance of the plane at Spokane, and then fly back to Anchorage having had very little sleep. Reeve earned $93,000 from this activity, enough to pay for the DC-3 and buy three more.

Eventually, Reeve settled into his niche of flying the Aleutian chain, island hopping all the way out to Shemya, Adak, and Attu, with an assortment of airplane types. His final fleet consisted of 6 Lockheed Electras and 2 Boeing 727-100s. However he served myriad Alaska locations, along with places in B.C. and the Russian Far East. Sadly, the airline ceased operations on Dec. 5, 2000 resulting in the loss of 250 jobs and the end of another historic pioneer Alaskan airline, after 55 years of operation.

Anchorage

Helio Courier - Fairbanks

C-46 Fairbanks

DC-6 Boeing Field

Honolulu - Delivery Flight New YS-11

Click here for a detailed Reeve history

Some Boeing stuff

Business Jets

In the Good Old Days of Bill Allen and T. Wilson, Boeing was conspicuous among large corporations for not having any corporate transport aircraft. This was no accident, it was by design. Allen and Wilson felt strongly that our customer base - the airlines - were in business to sell tickets to people wanting to go from Point A to Point B. Business jets were a vehicle to bypass the air carriers and thus deprive our customers of their life blood - ticket revenue. When they traveled, they bought tickets - expensive First Class tickets.. When they arrived at a customer airline location, they got off one of the customer's airplanes. These days, they'd call it "Good Optics."

In the era of Phil Condit, that philosophy went by the wayside, and Boeing acquired a small fleet of corporate business jets. Condit moved HQ to Chicago, so he needed a way to get back and forth to Seattle. Heaven forbid he might be forced to buy a ticket on United..... Since Boeing was selling BBJ's, that type was naturally acquired. So were a number of Canadair Challengers. A whole corporate flight department was established.

737 BBJ 836
(Boeing Business Jet) at PAE

BBJ 835 departing BFI

Canadair Challenger -- PAE

BBJ 839 departing BFI
Hey! I wonder how many BBJ's they actually have?

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The Saga of E209

Back around 1985-6, I was working for Jim Blue (again). He had a small group that sold Used Airplanes. Yes, just like your local Chevy Dealer, Boeing took trade-ins. Eventually, we sold 58 used airplanes for $913M. All that money flowed to the Bottom Line, since the corporation wrote down all their trade-ins to Zero. At the time, Boeing financials were doing poorly, so the used airplane revenues constituted all the company's earnings for a year or two.

More on this story in my Jim Blue Memorial - click here.

Boeing had taken in a bunch of 727-100s in trade from Lufthansa/Condor some years before. They had peddled most off, and used some as short term lease airplanes. They retained one - E-209 (D-ABIM) as a Utility airplane. It was re-registered N72700 and had experienced a bad ground fuel fire earlier in its career. Boeing used it for Flight Testing, Crew Training, Air-to-Air photo work, and occasionally as a transport. It was used in Testing Wind Shear avoidance and escape maneuvers developed after the Eastern 66 accident at JFK.

E209

Dean Thornton (DDT) was Boeing Commercial President at the time. Boeing had a fancy yacht named the Daedalus that they used for VIP customers. They also had a fishing lodge up in Campbell River on Vancouver Island. One day, Dean was romancing Ed Colodny, president of US Air, trying to close the deal on a big airplane sale. It was decided to take Ed up salmon fishing in Campbell River. In order to save time, they jumped on E209 and flew up there - about a 1 hour flight. While flying, the two were the only passengers on board, sitting in some First Class seats in the front of the airplane. Dean was giving Ed his best sales pitch, pleading poverty, and assuring Ed that Boeing was offering their very best deal and couldn't afford to shave even a nickel more off the price. Ed looked around the big empty airplane with just the two of them, rolled his eyes, and repeated Dean's line about Boeing having no money.....

When the airplane landed in Campbell River, Dean called Jim Blue. Jim was out of the office, so I took the call. "Sell this goddam airplane, and don't be slow about it" were his instructions. So we did, and I wound up with the job working the technical details of re-creating 9 years of maintenance history - seems Boeing Flight Test hadn't done much in terms of documenting the operational and maintenance history of the airplane. It was a shame, in a way, because E209 was used very little for that kind of personal business flying and extensively for a bunch of other stuff.

But - No more "bad optics" and rolling eyes during sales negotiations going forward! That's the difference, in a nutshell, between THEN and NOW. Now we have a Corporate Flight Department.

Detailed history of E209 - click here.

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Boeing Field Flight Line

Everett Flight Line - above and below

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Boeing "Storage" Yards

Boeing Field

PAE - Everett

This is a relatively new phenomenon. Part of the "New Boeing."

Boeing builds airplanes - all kinds - 737MAX, 787, 747-8, KC-46 - that they are unable to deliver for assorted reasons. Sometimes, for years. Inventory builds up, airplanes are big, and huge areas of stored airplanes appear - at Paine Field, Boeing Field, Renton, Moses Lake, Charleston, and other places. Many, many hundreds of airplanes. Over 500 at times! For Old Timers, it is unthinkable. It didn't use to be this way.....

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Rollout of the Last 747

A special paint job for the Seahawks 2015 Super Bowl

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Over the course of my Boeing career, I was assigned to manage and lead three world-wide Sales Tours with 3 different model airplanes. I have extensive photo records of those endeavors which I hope to create and post (one of these days....) In August 1982, we took the 6th Boeing 757 (NA006), not yet certified, on an extensive tour.

NA006 -- N505EA

Here's the airplane at (I believe) Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
We were carrying 8 Boeing Vice-Presidents!!!

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In March 1984, we took N306DL - a Delta 737-200 - which happened to be the 1000th 737 built, - on a tour of North and South America, Europe and Africa. Here it is rolling out of the factory.

Nordair Gate 6 at Montreal - I had left there 12 years before.

Gate 6 "belonged" to my wife Dot, a Nordair Ticket Agent.
It was at Gate 6 that I asked her out on our first date....

And here we are - the crew of the airplane - on Sal Island - part of the Cape Verde Islands in the South Atlantic. We were just getting ready to depart, leaving Africa, crossing the S. Atlantic to Cayenne, French Guiana in South America.

Maybe you recognize some of the faces?

If not, here is a Cheat Sheet

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Being a Boeing Test Plane can have a sad ending.

Boeing acquired a second hand 757 to use for environmental testing.

When the testing was over .... it was ferried to Moses Lake

Hurts.
Well, it hurts me....

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The original 787 test fleet had, er, problems.
Problems getting them into a salable configuration after testing was complete.
Especially the first six.
One went to the Pima Air Museum in Arizona.
Another went to Japan.
Number Three went to the Museum of Flight in Seattle

Here's Number Four over at Moses Lake.

This one bit the dust at Paine Field.
Like an air crash, someone cut out the Registration.
I think it's Number Five.

For some airplanes, the problems were insurmountable, and they bit the dust......
Boeing used this exercise to explore the complexities of scrapping a carbon fiber (plastic) airplane.

I got a nice response from my Rail Insertion last time, so a few more Quickies.

737 fuselages heading south on BNSF past Boeing Field

In the marshaling yard

Railroad Crossing - or is it Airplane Crossing?
Track runs right across the runway.
Or, the runway was built right across the track.....

Kelowna, B.C.
Taken by my friend Tom Twiggs (dec.), Boeing test pilot.
757s were being taken to a mod shop there for winglet installations.
The mod shop was on "the other side of the tracks', so to speak.....

Some More Faces

Kevin Lacey (dec.)
The sheet metal mechanic in Rome, NY who guided restoration of our Super Connie.

Click here for his great story.

Jon Proctor (dec.)
Long time Friend, Aviation Photographer, Historian, Author.
Editor of Airliners Magazine. Employee of TWA and Pan Am.
Here I'm giving him a ride in my RV-12 at his home in Sandpoint, Idaho
Click here for his great website.

Evan Elliott
The Man who really runs the Museum of Flight.
Without Evan, the Aircraft Collection would be nothing.

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Whatever successes I have had obtaining and restoring airplanes for the Museum of Flight has been largely the fallout from support of a number of influential Board members, who had trust in me and my ability to bring home the bacon - especially when I promised the impossible (like flying E1 - the 727 Prototype after sitting outside for 25 years.) Here are four key members of my Fan Club that occasionally made me look like a Hero.

Bruce McCaw

James Raisbeck and Bill Ayer

Jim Johnson

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Mike Ward
Retired Corporate, Western, Delta pilot
Mike lives on Orcas Island and we exchange constant emails.
We both write stories about our aviation past and we both encourage each other.

Back to my Eye Candy

Things you don't see every day....

Ever seen a shrink-wrapped B-29? Well you have now.

.... or a Tunis 727 parked in the snow?

YUL - Montreal

HNL

Immortal Stinson

BFI

HNL

BFI

LAX

F-102 Castle AFB

Those were the "Good Old Days"
Orlando - before Disney World, before the big terminal, before Everything.
When a pilot could park in front and stop off at the Cocktail Lounge for a little "Reinforcement".

That's all for this time - tune back in for #9

Eye Candy #9

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