Air Force One at LAX

One Saturday in the fall of 1997 I was driving around my usual haunts in Los Angeles when I heard a report on KNX, one of the local news radio stations, that Bill Clinton would be arriving that afternoon for a fundraising event.

Now whatever you might think of any particular President, I think that Air Force One is a damned attractive airplane! At the time, I'd been working in an office building adjacent to LAX for several years, and had managed to catch a glimpse or two of Air Force One arrivals. But I'd never had a camera handy during those times. Now I had my chance!

I drove home and picked up my photo gear (this was during my pre-digital days). My previous observations suggested that AF-1 liked to arrive on the north runway complex at LAX, possibly because the runways are slightly longer than the south complex. I knew where some good observation spots could be found, so I parked the van and waited. Some years earlier I'd picked up a nice Radio Shack scanning monitor that included the aircraft VHF bands, so I could follow the controllers as they guided planes into and out of the airport.

It wasn't a long wait, and eventually a small little crowd developed. When I heard AF-1s pilot call out the outer marker, I knew it was time to start shooting. (Photos, of course!) The arrival and landing was completely uneventful, and here is the result of that afternoon's photo safari!

Click on any image for a larger version.

This photo sequence was taken with my Nikon F3 and 500mm Reflex-Nikkor lens on Kodachrome 64 film.