7 ms·

Is this plane landing or departing? (2017)

145 points by tkelemen 6y ago

iso1631 6y ago
Why not a touch-and-go? It's a long way down the runway, could it have landed, touched, then for some reason powered up to take off again
- perk 6y ago
  The photographer was there, he just can't remember if the plane was landing or taking off. Presumably he would remember a touch and go, I would :)
dbatten 6y ago
I remember this showing up in the SO sidebar a long time ago (what a time-suck that thing is). At the time, I remember thinking that some of these people must be trolling - and I still do. For example, the people arguing that the wheels have already touched down. It seems abundantly obvious to me that the wheels have NOT touched down, and that the small strip of black asphalt running parallel to the wheels is a taxi-way in the background which has lots of small aircraft sitting on it. I get the uneasy feeling that anybody that sees it any differently is just trying to gaslight me. But, then, that was also the feeling I got about the blue dress, and that turned out to be all too genuine... People genuinely saw it differently, they weren't trolling. To me, the lack of heat blur behind the engines seems to be reasonably conclusive evidence that it's landing... But who knows.
- oconnor663 6y ago
  Did you see the extra photos at https://i.stack.imgur.com/QTrv2.jpg https://i.stack.imgur.com/QTrv2.jpg ? That might help with the wheels question.
- shawabawa3 6y ago
  The full set of photos was found - it was landing https://i.stack.imgur.com/QTrv2.jpg https://i.stack.imgur.com/QTrv2.jpg The taxi-way is the foreground - the wheels do indeed seem like they have touched down or are millimetres away
- miahi 6y ago
  The strip in the foreground seems to be taxiway B[1], and not the runway (taxiways have yellow short lines, runways white long lines) [1] https://skyvector.com/files/tpp/2014/pdf/00384AD.PDF https://skyvector.com/files/tpp/2014/pdf/00384AD.PDF
- malexw 6y ago
  > I remember this showing up in the SO sidebar a long time ago (what a time-suck that thing is). I ended up installing this Chrome extension to block the "Hot Network Questions" parts of Stack Exchange because I found that I was getting distracted by them too often. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stack-block/oaimjdjckmmblefojgncilidkkandhbl?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stack-block/oaimjd...
  - Farbklex 6y ago
    You can now disable "Hot network questions" in the site's settings. Had to do this as well because they were just too distracting.
- jessriedel 6y ago
  Based on the later-discovered extra photos, it appears that the taxi-way in the background (which, as you say, is clearly much further from the camera than the landing plane due to the tiny small aircraft parked along it) is nearly perfectly overlapping with the actual runway, so that at the moment of touchdown the wheels look like they are touching both the runway and the background taxi-way. The larger blacktop with yellow lines in the foreground of the picture is a second taxi-way (closer to the camera than the runway, and clearly offset from it visually). This in particular can be seen by the fourth photo in the time series, the one taken immediately after the OP photo. The quirky features of OP photo are such a nerd snipe, and the later finding the complete photo series is just so convenient, that I'm tempted to think the whole Stack Exchange post was planned.
- mannykannot 6y ago
  As one person pointed out on the site, the shadow of the airplane can just be made out on the actual runway, while it is clearly missing from the ramp / taxiway in the foreground. The wheels are, in fact, off the ground, but only just, as revealed by the smoke in the next image of the sequence. I, too, was convinced by the absense of heat blur.
fsflover 6y ago
Previous discussion (2017): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13405121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13405121.
- ralfd 6y ago
  Top answer at the time was right: > "There is motion blur on the traffic cone suggesting that camera was moving right and slightly down. There is no blur on the plane itself since the camera was locked to the plane's motion. So I deduce a landing photo."
joncrane 6y ago
Do you think it's possible that Air Force One Pilots are instructed to land at unconventional spots on the runway to foil potential threats? Perhaps even to land at different spots on the runway on different landings? I know it sounds far-fetched, but my mom who was the "Cultural Affairs Officer" at the US Embassy in San Jose Costa Rica was instructed to take a different route from home to the embassy and back every day, and to try to depart at slightly different times each trip. This was in the late 80s when Costa Rica was a relatively safe place (it's even safer today).
- justusthane 6y ago
  My uninformed intuition would be that trying to land the plane differently each time would introduce more risk than it would protect against (and what threats would it even protect against?).
  - usrusr 6y ago
    You might be right with that suspicion, but if the person responsible for procedures puts up a rule demanding unpredictable runway usage they have done their job Very Well. A cautious "this might not be such a good idea actually" however will make them seem weak in certain eyes and might even make them some personal enemies, for displaying lack of trust in the pilots' abilities. I suspect that nobody without the career instincts to intuitively know those things will come anywhere close to that plane.
    - na85 6y ago
      That's... not how military aviation works. The people flying the plane (Lieutenant-Colonels) are junior/subordinate to the people making the rules (usually 1- and 2-star Generals).
- mhh__ 6y ago
  The full-blown practice of this (so things like losing a tail) is referred poetically referred to the Russian intelligence services as dry-cleaning (Proverka? I forget the exact russian term)
jasode 6y ago
Buried in the comments[1] is a jpg showing the sequence of multiple photos and one of the images has smoke from the tires landing: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QTrv2.jpg https://i.stack.imgur.com/QTrv2.jpg It's a fun mental exercise to know that the final answer is landing while reading the answers that forcefully argue that the plane is taking off. Some of the "evidence" to support that the plane is taking off is very persuasive. [1] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/34586/is-this-plane-landing-or-departing#comment194183_34609 https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/34586/is-this-p...
- dbatten 6y ago
  Well, that's interesting. The person who originally wrote the Aviation SE question was claiming to be the original photographer and saying he couldn't remember if the plane was taking off or landing... But, if the internet had access to the whole sequence of images, surely he did as well? So why was he asking? Was it just a puzzle? EDIT: From a different comment, it's clear that the photographer later found the whole series of pictures AFTER asking the question, and posted them online. So the photographer was confused, but later found the rest of his photos, which definitively show the plane LANDING. Case closed.
amelius 6y ago
This is why I don't understand why people like to take photographs of planes. They look the same every time! (The same holds for cars).
- CarVac 6y ago
  This applies even more to the moon, in my opinion. Looking at the moon, that's one thing. But taking a picture of the moon? Go to NASA or Wikipedia for a great high-res picture.
  - probably_wrong 6y ago
    I think the key to understanding the allure is by extending your line of reasoning even further. Why play piano? There are plenty of recordings of people who play better than I ever will. Why play chess? I will never be able to beat my computer anyway. Why paint portraits? I will never be as good as Rembrandt, and my camera is infinitely better anyway. I think the point of the activity is not "I will take the best picture of this plane/the moon that anyone has ever taken". Rather, it's "I will take the best picture that I ever took".
    - CarVac 6y ago
      My issue with the moon, in particular, is that: a) it's not hard, it just requires a long focal length. b) it's not a creative act. The moon drowns out anything else, so it ends up being just a picture of an orb surrounded by black. Piano is extremely challenging, and playing something well gives you that feeling of having overcome a worthwhile challenge. Chess is likewise a battle of self-improvement. Same with painting. Moon photography? There's zero creativity involved, it's just about whether you've gone out and bought that 150-600 zoom you've been eyeing.
  - lm28469 6y ago
    At this point just stay in your bed and wait for death. Everything you'll ever do has been done better in the past. Humans need to keep busy and build/do shit, most of it is useless in the grand scheme of things Setting up a camera capable of taking quality pics of celestial bodies sounds like a fun hobby, see: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/166334-debayering-a-dslrs-bayer-matrix/page/9/ https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/166334-debayering-a-dslrs...
pldr1234 6y ago
You'd have to research what planes look like departing and landing. But without that.. I would have thought (as a layman) - is the plane doing anything to add vs cut drag? That could be a clue... (from a toy perspective of how planes work in movies ofc).
thedoctor79 6y ago
This answer: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/34627 https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/34627 is most likely correct. Based on the fact that main carriage is off the ground, flap setting and wing AoA. During departure the rotation angle would be larger before main wheels leave the ground.
goodcanadian 6y ago
My quick guess was landing for the simple reason that the plane would very quickly rotate through that particular attitude taking off, but would travel much further in that attitude on landing.
Someone 6y ago
I think I see a wheel bogie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogie) that’s over 45 degrees from the horizontal. Would that ever happen so soon after take off? I would think these stayed fairly horizontal until it’s known the plane won’t abort take off.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
app4soft 6y ago
It just reminds me Blender meme.[0] [0] https://twitter.com/mxeon1001/status/1108738701956472833 https://twitter.com/mxeon1001/status/1108738701956472833 [image] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D2MH4hwWwAEjhsv?format=jpg&name=orig https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D2MH4hwWwAEjhsv?format=jpg&name=...
wlll 6y ago
Yes!
nexuist 6y ago
I don't understand why nobody asked OP the exact date and time this picture was taken, which they would certainly have if they are the original photographer. With a date and time you can easily cross reference press schedules (released by the White House) or flight plan data (archived by FlightRadar24 among others) or Twitter posts or other published photographs or....etc. AF1 isn't exactly a stealth fighter; its location at least domestically is rather well tracked.
amenghra 6y ago
Takeoff: https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=Takeoff&i=409873 https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=Takeoff&i=409873 Landing: https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=Landing&i=2912396 https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=Landing&i=2912396 Taking off. QED.

145 points by tkelemen 6y ago

Why not a touch-and-go? It's a long way down the runway, could it have landed, touched, then for some reason powered up to take off again

perk 6y ago
The photographer was there, he just can't remember if the plane was landing or taking off. Presumably he would remember a touch and go, I would :)

dbatten 6y ago

I remember this showing up in the SO sidebar a long time ago (what a time-suck that thing is). At the time, I remember thinking that some of these people must be trolling - and I still do. For example, the people arguing that the wheels have already touched down. It seems abundantly obvious to me that the wheels have NOT touched down, and that the small strip of black asphalt running parallel to the wheels is a taxi-way in the background which has lots of small aircraft sitting on it. I get the uneasy feeling that anybody that sees it any differently is just trying to gaslight me. But, then, that was also the feeling I got about the blue dress, and that turned out to be all too genuine... People genuinely saw it differently, they weren't trolling. To me, the lack of heat blur behind the engines seems to be reasonably conclusive evidence that it's landing... But who knows.

oconnor663 6y ago
Did you see the extra photos at https://i.stack.imgur.com/QTrv2.jpg https://i.stack.imgur.com/QTrv2.jpg ? That might help with the wheels question.
shawabawa3 6y ago
The full set of photos was found - it was landing https://i.stack.imgur.com/QTrv2.jpg https://i.stack.imgur.com/QTrv2.jpg The taxi-way is the foreground - the wheels do indeed seem like they have touched down or are millimetres away
miahi 6y ago
The strip in the foreground seems to be taxiway B[1], and not the runway (taxiways have yellow short lines, runways white long lines) [1] https://skyvector.com/files/tpp/2014/pdf/00384AD.PDF https://skyvector.com/files/tpp/2014/pdf/00384AD.PDF
malexw 6y ago
> I remember this showing up in the SO sidebar a long time ago (what a time-suck that thing is). I ended up installing this Chrome extension to block the "Hot Network Questions" parts of Stack Exchange because I found that I was getting distracted by them too often. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stack-block/oaimjdjckmmblefojgncilidkkandhbl?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stack-block/oaimjd...
- Farbklex 6y ago
  You can now disable "Hot network questions" in the site's settings. Had to do this as well because they were just too distracting.
jessriedel 6y ago
Based on the later-discovered extra photos, it appears that the taxi-way in the background (which, as you say, is clearly much further from the camera than the landing plane due to the tiny small aircraft parked along it) is nearly perfectly overlapping with the actual runway, so that at the moment of touchdown the wheels look like they are touching both the runway and the background taxi-way. The larger blacktop with yellow lines in the foreground of the picture is a second taxi-way (closer to the camera than the runway, and clearly offset from it visually). This in particular can be seen by the fourth photo in the time series, the one taken immediately after the OP photo. The quirky features of OP photo are such a nerd snipe, and the later finding the complete photo series is just so convenient, that I'm tempted to think the whole Stack Exchange post was planned.
mannykannot 6y ago
As one person pointed out on the site, the shadow of the airplane can just be made out on the actual runway, while it is clearly missing from the ramp / taxiway in the foreground. The wheels are, in fact, off the ground, but only just, as revealed by the smoke in the next image of the sequence. I, too, was convinced by the absense of heat blur.

fsflover 6y ago

Previous discussion (2017): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13405121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13405121.

ralfd 6y ago
Top answer at the time was right: > "There is motion blur on the traffic cone suggesting that camera was moving right and slightly down. There is no blur on the plane itself since the camera was locked to the plane's motion. So I deduce a landing photo."

joncrane 6y ago

Do you think it's possible that Air Force One Pilots are instructed to land at unconventional spots on the runway to foil potential threats? Perhaps even to land at different spots on the runway on different landings? I know it sounds far-fetched, but my mom who was the "Cultural Affairs Officer" at the US Embassy in San Jose Costa Rica was instructed to take a different route from home to the embassy and back every day, and to try to depart at slightly different times each trip. This was in the late 80s when Costa Rica was a relatively safe place (it's even safer today).

justusthane 6y ago
My uninformed intuition would be that trying to land the plane differently each time would introduce more risk than it would protect against (and what threats would it even protect against?).
- usrusr 6y ago
  You might be right with that suspicion, but if the person responsible for procedures puts up a rule demanding unpredictable runway usage they have done their job Very Well. A cautious "this might not be such a good idea actually" however will make them seem weak in certain eyes and might even make them some personal enemies, for displaying lack of trust in the pilots' abilities. I suspect that nobody without the career instincts to intuitively know those things will come anywhere close to that plane.
  - na85 6y ago
    That's... not how military aviation works. The people flying the plane (Lieutenant-Colonels) are junior/subordinate to the people making the rules (usually 1- and 2-star Generals).
mhh__ 6y ago
The full-blown practice of this (so things like losing a tail) is referred poetically referred to the Russian intelligence services as dry-cleaning (Proverka? I forget the exact russian term)

jasode 6y ago

Buried in the comments[1] is a jpg showing the sequence of multiple photos and one of the images has smoke from the tires landing: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QTrv2.jpg https://i.stack.imgur.com/QTrv2.jpg It's a fun mental exercise to know that the final answer is landing while reading the answers that forcefully argue that the plane is taking off. Some of the "evidence" to support that the plane is taking off is very persuasive. [1] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/34586/is-this-plane-landing-or-departing#comment194183_34609 https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/34586/is-this-p...

dbatten 6y ago
Well, that's interesting. The person who originally wrote the Aviation SE question was claiming to be the original photographer and saying he couldn't remember if the plane was taking off or landing... But, if the internet had access to the whole sequence of images, surely he did as well? So why was he asking? Was it just a puzzle? EDIT: From a different comment, it's clear that the photographer later found the whole series of pictures AFTER asking the question, and posted them online. So the photographer was confused, but later found the rest of his photos, which definitively show the plane LANDING. Case closed.

amelius 6y ago

This is why I don't understand why people like to take photographs of planes. They look the same every time! (The same holds for cars).

CarVac 6y ago
This applies even more to the moon, in my opinion. Looking at the moon, that's one thing. But taking a picture of the moon? Go to NASA or Wikipedia for a great high-res picture.
- probably_wrong 6y ago
  I think the key to understanding the allure is by extending your line of reasoning even further. Why play piano? There are plenty of recordings of people who play better than I ever will. Why play chess? I will never be able to beat my computer anyway. Why paint portraits? I will never be as good as Rembrandt, and my camera is infinitely better anyway. I think the point of the activity is not "I will take the best picture of this plane/the moon that anyone has ever taken". Rather, it's "I will take the best picture that I ever took".
  - CarVac 6y ago
    My issue with the moon, in particular, is that: a) it's not hard, it just requires a long focal length. b) it's not a creative act. The moon drowns out anything else, so it ends up being just a picture of an orb surrounded by black. Piano is extremely challenging, and playing something well gives you that feeling of having overcome a worthwhile challenge. Chess is likewise a battle of self-improvement. Same with painting. Moon photography? There's zero creativity involved, it's just about whether you've gone out and bought that 150-600 zoom you've been eyeing.
- lm28469 6y ago
  At this point just stay in your bed and wait for death. Everything you'll ever do has been done better in the past. Humans need to keep busy and build/do shit, most of it is useless in the grand scheme of things Setting up a camera capable of taking quality pics of celestial bodies sounds like a fun hobby, see: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/166334-debayering-a-dslrs-bayer-matrix/page/9/ https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/166334-debayering-a-dslrs...

pldr1234 6y ago

You'd have to research what planes look like departing and landing. But without that.. I would have thought (as a layman) - is the plane doing anything to add vs cut drag? That could be a clue... (from a toy perspective of how planes work in movies ofc).

thedoctor79 6y ago

This answer: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/34627 https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/34627 is most likely correct. Based on the fact that main carriage is off the ground, flap setting and wing AoA. During departure the rotation angle would be larger before main wheels leave the ground.

goodcanadian 6y ago

My quick guess was landing for the simple reason that the plane would very quickly rotate through that particular attitude taking off, but would travel much further in that attitude on landing.

Someone 6y ago

I think I see a wheel bogie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogie) that’s over 45 degrees from the horizontal. Would that ever happen so soon after take off? I would think these stayed fairly horizontal until it’s known the plane won’t abort take off.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

app4soft 6y ago

It just reminds me Blender meme.[0] [0] https://twitter.com/mxeon1001/status/1108738701956472833 https://twitter.com/mxeon1001/status/1108738701956472833 [image] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D2MH4hwWwAEjhsv?format=jpg&name=orig https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D2MH4hwWwAEjhsv?format=jpg&name=...

wlll 6y ago

Yes!

nexuist 6y ago

I don't understand why nobody asked OP the exact date and time this picture was taken, which they would certainly have if they are the original photographer. With a date and time you can easily cross reference press schedules (released by the White House) or flight plan data (archived by FlightRadar24 among others) or Twitter posts or other published photographs or....etc. AF1 isn't exactly a stealth fighter; its location at least domestically is rather well tracked.

amenghra 6y ago

Takeoff: https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=Takeoff&i=409873 https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=Takeoff&i=409873 Landing: https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=Landing&i=2912396 https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=Landing&i=2912396 Taking off. QED.