The first Boeing 747 into Whitehorse since 2013

Posted On November 12, 2023

For the many people in Whitehorse who are interested in aircraft, having a Boeing 747 land here is a big deal. Prior to the one I’m going to tell you about, there had only been three – two from Korean Air were forced to land here on September 11, 2001, and a Nippon freighter made a precautionary landing in 2013 because of a possible fire in the cargo area. Max Fraser’s 2011 documentary “Never Happen Here – The Whitehorse 911 Story” tells the story of that terrifying day, and my blog post “A Boeing 747 in Whitehorse!” tells that much calmer story.

On November 9th, I went back to bed for my first nap at 08:30, partially because Tucker loves his after-breakfast naps with me, so I often join him mostly for that reason. When I woke up, several emails, Facebook messages, and posts changed my day in a hurry. FlightRadar 24 verified that a 747 had landed 5 minutes after I went to bed!

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At 10:29, which was 36 minutes after sunrise, I shot the first of many photos. This was sort of an insurance shot as I saw it from my car after parking in the main lot. I don’t know, perhaps in case this wasn’t really happening 🙂

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Struggling to figure out how best to photograph the plane, I went into the terminal to see how it looked from there.

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The spot that used to draw most airplane watchers got blocked by construction of a new building this past summer.

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I next drove north on the Alaska Highway a bit, and shot the next photo from the shoulder of the road – well, I walked down the slope about 30 feet to get the wires out of the way, actually. This photo was shot at 135mm – the only time I used my long lens for this massive plane was while shooting from the highway. While I like having the tower in the view, this is a messy vantage point.

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Another shot from that spot, at 400mm. At this point I knew nothing about the plane except the obvious – that it was operated by Kalitta Air, a freight operator I know fairly well from frequent sightings at Anchorage.

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A fuel truck had showed up but soon left. At 11:00 they returned with a trailer. I saw a question online asking how much fuel a 747 carries – the amusing answer was “a truck, sometimes a truck and a half” 🙂 The actual answer is that a 747-400 can carry a maximum of 238,604 litres of fuel (and it burns 4 litres per second at cruise). The next two photos were shot from a different spot on the highway.

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While my main focus was on the 747, normal activities at the airport of course continued. The next photo shows Alkan Air’s 1986 Dornier 228-202. I just noticed that I don’t have it on my Yukon Aircraft Photographs page, so I’ll use this one to rectify that, bringing the totals to 266 photos of 227 different aircraft.

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C-GVGX, Air North’s 1992 Aerospatiale-Alenia ATR 42-320, also taxied by and then took off, headed for Dawson, Inuvik, and Old Crow.

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There was no indication that the 747 might be leaving soon, so I drove into town and picked up a McDonald’s breakfast to bring back, then settled in at my usual spot just north of the terminal to see if I could figure out what had happened and what was going to happen. At 12:15 I got a few photos of an interesting alignment of planes and a fire truck.

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At 12:30, two hours after arriving, I shot a few more portraits of the 747, then headed home, where I was more comfortable researching. My primary goal now was to find out when it was leaving so I could get a video of that event.

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First, the aircraft – N700CK is a 1997 Boeing 747-4R7F (serial number 25868) operated by Kalitta Air LLC. Kalitta Air is a cargo airline headquartered at Willow Run Airport, Ypsilanti Township, Michigan. Its call sign “Connie” is from its founder, Connie Kalitta, a name well known to fans of drag racing of the past.

The planned flight had been JFK-ANC-TAO, a route it had been flying regularly in recent weeks. ANC is a fuelling stop at Anchorage, TAO is the Qingdao Jiaodong International Airport in China, just opened 2 years ago. I don’t know what the cargo was – while many people are saying lobster, that seems unlikely.

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Here’s a closer look at the course change that brought them to Whitehorse. The dashed line, and another seen in the route map above, may given credence to a story that they were having problems with some of the IFR equipment, though I’m seeing a few of those dashed lines over the Yukon now.

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By now the generally accepted reason for our guest’s arrival was bad weather at ANC. Photos didn’t look bad to me – the next one is by Michelle Shangin, posted in the History of Alaska Commercial Aviation group on Facebook.

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Much more searching showed, though, that ANC had had a very bad storm the previous day, and the ramps were jammed with aircraft. While passenger aircraft were being allowed to land, many freighters were not – basically as one left, another one could land. Many freighters were diverted – Fairbanks took 11, I think (and reported that they could take up to 27).

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To me, the ANC situation still didn’t explain the diversion to Whitehorse, which is an emergency strip, as it’s not certified for 747s. Weather plus something else was what I was looking for.

One of the stories going around was that the plane was going to depart at midnight. I got there just before 11:30 and stayed for half an hour – it was dark and quiet and it was clear that nothing was going to be happening that night.

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Another story said 07:00 the next day (November 10th) would be the departure time, so I was back early. I don’t remember how long I was there, but I only shot 2 photos, both with my phone, for Facebook posts. The next one, showing the outside view and my car’s dashcam view, was shot at 08:33 as the dawn light was getting quite wonderful – I really love dawn light.

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The next was shot at 09:33. The scanner makes long waits much more interesting – while the control tower was pretty quiet, ground control had lots going on.

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There were no more stories worth chasing on the 10th, but at 05:40 on the 11th I posted this on Facebook just before dashing out the door: “Whitehorse friends – if any of you want to watch the 747 take off, they’ve filed a flight plan for a 07:10 departure.” 🙂

I shot the first photo that day with my phone at 06:32 – within a minute or so that wall of fog seen in the next photo had rolled over the airport and I could barely see the plane!!! Shooting the takeoff in the dark was going to be bad enough, but now fog as well? 🙁

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At 06:50 I started shooting what would end up as 14 videos – this 2-minute one is the first two stitched together.

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A couple of minutes before 07:00, there was enough activity that the 07:10 departure looked likely. This video is 45 seconds long.

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But no, I could occasionally see spray from de-icing on the far side – there was a lot to do yet. At 08:05, C-FANB was pulled into the jetway to board people for its Vancouver flight.

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At 08:25, the de-icing team came around to work on the visible side.

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At 09:00, the de-icing was continuing… The video below the still photo is 35 seconds long.

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Starting the engines is visually impressive on a cold day. This video is just over 5 minutes long.

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Finally, the video I had been obsessed about getting for 3 days. I unfortunately didn’t have a view that allowed me to see it lifting off the ground, and it quickly disappeared into the clouds at 10:06, just short of 3 hours later than we had expected. Being fueled up here, it was able to go straight to TAO without the usual ANC stop,

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In the end, I still don’t know why “Connie 700” came to Whitehorse – perhaps weather, perhaps a mechanical issue, perhaps a combination. It was a fun 3 days in any case – I got to share my passion/obsession with a lot of people, both through my play-by-play postings on Facebook, and talking to other photographers I already knew well at the airport.

In 20 days I’ll be back in the air again myself, flying to Calgary to see my kids and their families 🙂

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November 13, 2023, edit: N700CK returned to Whitehorse at 07:38 this morning, diverted from the same route as Thursday’s! It could be a weather backup at ANC again – the ramp certainly looks busy, though there’s only one 747 at FAI as of noon.