Planespotting In Nashville

A couple weeks ago, my best friend from high school flew into KBNA with the best ride to show up at Signature Aviation. Micah is a crew chief for VMM-264, operating the MV-22 Osprey, and two weeks ago, three of the Ospreys flew into to Nashville via New York for a training flight. In addition, it was a celebratory final flight for five pilots. A couple were going to the airlines, and the others were going to desk jobs, but they all came to Nashville to celebrate, after having pizza in New York and taking a nice photo op while passing the Statue of Liberty and Freedom Tower of the WTC.

After arriving into Nashville Friday evening, there was no flying scheduled for Saturday, so Micah and I got to hang out for the first time in over three years. We both love aviation photography, and before Micah’s recent deployment to the Middle East, he purchased an entry level Canon DSLR like the one I have. If you check out his Instagram profile (@roebot17), you will find a good bit of his lovely work from his deployment.

The morning was spent catching up (and drinking plenty of coffee), before we headed back to Nashville in the afternoon along with my wife to get a little tour of the Osprey. While not Micah’s favorite choice of assignment when he joined the Marines, he has grown to love the aircraft, and my wife and I had a wonderful time getting a tour of the aircraft. The pinnacle for me was getting to sit in the cockpit with my best friend while we discussed procedures and the operational quirks of perhaps the most versatile aircraft in the US inventory.

A photo my wife took of Micah and me sitting in the cockpit of one of the Ospreys.

After hanging out with the Ospreys for about half an hour, we drove to the official airplane watching area at Nashville, located at the end off of Vultee Boulevard. It was the first time Micah and I had gotten to photograph airplanes together, and we were decidedly more enthusiastic about it than my wife, who is the farthest thing from an avgeek.

From the planespotting area, we had a wonderful view across the airport, with the V-22s from Micah’s squadron positioned on taxiway U directly opposite of our vantage point.

The majority of traffic in Nashville is Southwest’s 737s, and a mix of Delta, American, and United 737s and Airbus aircraft, ranging from A319s to A321s. The rest of the traffic consists of Embraers and CRJs operated by United and American’s contractors. However, there is a daily British Airways flight direct from London Heathrow using a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner. When we arrived at the spotting area, the 787 wasn’t at the gate. A quick check of FlightAware confirmed our hopes. BA223 was only about twenty minutes out, inbound on the PASLY4 arrival into Nashville. After shooting photos of a couple Southwest departures and a handful of United, Alaska, and American Eagle arrivals, we spotted the Dreamliner’s landing lights as the plane descended below 10,000 feet.

Alaska flight 1100 arriving inbound from San Francisco, just a few minutes prior to British Airways 223’s arrival.

On its return flight to London, the British Airways flight occasionally uses the KRSTA3 departure, usually when the weather is more favorable to take a more northern flight path than usual. The initial waypoint on the KRSTA3, CERAH, is only about two or three miles east of my house, and jets going northbound cross over consistently between 12,000 and 17,000 feet. It was only because I would occasionally see the BA Dreamliner go over our house that I knew the plane frequently operated in and out of Nashville, and the prospect of seeing the jet close up was quite exciting.

When I told my wife—who was sitting in the car while Micah and I geeked out—that the British Airways flight that often flew over the house was inbound, she replied with a semi-enthusiastic, “Oh, cool!” to which I very enthusiastically replied, “Yeah! It’s going to be awesome!” As the biggest jet that Nashville services entered the downwind leg for runway 02L, several other cars pulled into the parking lot. Surprisingly to me, at least five other people arrived just to watch the Dreamliner land, which is a daily occurrence and certainly not out of the ordinary.

British Airways 223 flaring just prior to touchdown on runway 02L.

The primary impression was simply the size of the 787. There are plenty of aircraft bigger, but the Dreamliner is the largest plane routinely operating in and out of Nashville, and it dwarfs the 737s and A321s. As the 787 exited the runway at the very end, I looked back at my wife and her eyes were as big as plates. “That thing was huge! I didn’t realize how big that plane would be!” She understood why Micah and I were losing our minds.

After the 787 landed, we stayed for about another hour, just shooting whatever pictures we could while the light faded. A thick altocumulus cloud deck had moved in from the west, and it quickly got to the point to where the photos were becoming unusable, either due to noise from a high ISO or motion blur from longer and longer shutter speeds in an attempt not to push the ISO too high.

All in all, it was a successful day. We’d gotten a personal tour of the “plopter”, and Micah and I shot about ten gigabytes of photos each, and made memories more precious than any of the photos. I’d gotten to hear stories from Micah’s deployment, from the fun adventures to the near-death experiences. Even with software refinements that have made the V-22 immensely safer than it was at its creation, it is still an unforgiving bird to fly.

While Micah and I were in the cockpit of the Osprey going over emergency procedures in the operating handbook, my wife was in the back of the aircraft, and she took a quick picture on her phone of one of the crew members helmet and gear laying on the seat. Later that night, after we’d dropped Micah off at the hotel and we had gotten home, she sent me all of the photos she’d taken that day, and that particular photo grabbed my heart. It told a story to me that was very sobering. Even though at the time this aircraft was in Nashville, Tennessee, deep within the heart of the United States, just a few months before it had been in Kuwait, and on a Navy ship in the Persian Gulf. The V-22’s are finicky birds, and several have been lost on ship-borne takeoffs like the ones Micah participated on during his deployment. Men have been lost, laying their lives out on the line in service to the United States, and that is the story this photo told me. It was a story of the men who didn’t come home. It is with that tribute that I will bring this story to an end.