LAX-LHR

Started: 2006-06-12 22:16:11

Submitted: 2006-06-12 22:29:09

Visibility: World-readable

On Thursday afternoons, after work and before Hacking Society or BLUG, I hike somewhere in the mountains above Boulder. After doing a pair of hikes I've done dozens of times before (Mount Sanitas one week, and Royal Arch another week), I set out to find trails I haven't hiked before. Despite living in Boulder for fifteen years, there are many of these trails around. A week ago (1 June 2006) I was at Chautauqua and saw a distinctive quad jet contrail. I had my sexy new digital SLR handy, complete with its 200 mm zoom lens, so I zoomed in as far as I could go and took this picture:

Once I zoomed in on my computer screen, I immediately recognized the plane as a 747 in Virgin Atlantic's livery. The Internet confirmed my hypothesis that it was flying from LAX to London Heathrow and told me it was flight 8, which flew over Boulder at exactly the time I took that photo on 1 June. (FlightAware also suggested that flight 8 was diverted to Goose Bay on 5 June, but so far I haven't located any articles.)