American Airlines Airbus A321 N582UW PSA Heritage Livery at TNCC
American Airlines flight 2739 from Miami (MIA/KMIA), operated by Airbus A321-231 N582UW in PSA Heritage livery, engages the thrust reversers on runway 11.
American Airlines continues to be kind to Curaçao spotters, sending another of their special livery airliners on May 29th.
Operating the daily late afternoon flight from Miami International Airport (MIA/KMIA) was Airbus A321-213 registered N582UW in the “PSA heritage” livery. The colourful jet, with its distinctive “smile” nose arrived with the sun directly overhead. The resulting poor light conditions meant that I had to change locations to avoid backlit shots.
Somewhat unusually, N582UW backtracked from taxiway Delta all the way to the departure end of runway 11 instead of using taxiway Alpha when it departed for MIA/KMIA an hour lateral flight AA1800.
After approximately an hour at the terminal, N582UW pushed back from the gate as flight AA 1800, heading back to Miami. By this time, the light conditions were more favourable for photos of the aircraft on the ground at the departure end of runway 11. I had it in mind to capture the aircraft head-on as it made its way down on taxiway Alpha. Airport operations, it would seem, had other plans.
A nice head-on view of N582UW showing the “smily face” that the PSA heritage livery is well known for.
Not having my radio scanner at hand, I missed the taxi clearance issued by Hato tower. For this reason, I do not know why N582UW used taxiway Delta and then proceeded to backtrack on the runway. Upon reaching the departure end of runway 11, the pilots of the Airbus executed a 180-degree turn to align it with the runway and promptly departed. While not what I had envisioned when setting out for the shoot, I still got the head-on shot I was looking for, along with a bit of a different perspective than usual.
N582UW makes the 180-degree turn to line up for departure.
Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) was in operation from 1949 to 1988 and headquartered in San Diego, California. PSA painted a smile on the nose of its aircraft, styling itself as “The world’s friendliest airline”. The low-cost carrier was purchased by USAir in 1987 and integrated into USAir operations the following year. Later, USAir would itself be absorbed by American Airlines. Today, PSA is a regional airline and subsidiary of American Airlines. It operates a fleet of Bombardier (now Mitsubishi) CRJ aircraft, has approximately 5000 employees, and operates more than 800 flights each day.
In 2017, while shooting at Vancouver International Airport (YVR/CYVR) I captured the previous aircraft to carry the PSA heritage livery, an Airbus A319-112 registered N742PS. This aircraft had been painted in PSA heritage livery by USAir, and was retained as such by American Airlines. Today, N742PS still flies for American Airlines in standard company livery.
American Airlines Airbus A319-112 N742PS makes a wet entrance on the runway at Vancouver International Airport (YVR/CYVR) back in May 2017.
A closer view of N742PS on a wet runway 08L at YVR/CYVR in May 2017.
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