This is an interesting one.
I’ve never really thought photos would be of much use. I remember a FlyerTalk guy once telling me he had had some success with that, but almost all of his old missing flights were from LHR, where lhr-lgw had most things covered, and a lot of the ones that had been missed there were from small airlines with not many planes, where a photo from LHR or even another location might easily confirm or rule out a particular aircraft.
I’ve never found any photos that were relevant in the past, like when I was trying to track down my last few AC CR9 flights and had already narrowed it down to a small number of aircraft. Interesting that here we might actually have some that are helpful!
I think he’s just referring to YYC as its “base” because that’s WS’s HQ and main hub. Unlike how Ryanair will base an aircraft in a particular place for several months and it will mostly just operate flights out of there and back for a while, WS’s fleet would have just rotated all around the network as needed. Even back in 2009, one probably would have considered YYZ and YVR to also be WS hubs, although on a much smaller scale.
So I wouldn’t read anything in to that comment.
I’ve been trying to make sense of the photos and correlate them to ADS-B tracks from Flight Aware, and it’s not obvious.
The mountains are in the background, which means we’re facing roughly west. The sun is behind us, so that does track with these being taken in the morning. For the one on approach, it might be a bit bright for 07:30 in November, but it’s early November and just after the DST switch, so maybe it’s not out of line?
The approach shot has to be taken east of the runway. And at that time, we only had the one N/S runway (what's now the west runway, 17R/35L, which would have been 16/34 back then). Since the plane is on approach, it’s taken from somewhere fairly far south. The ski jumps that are visible in the background are at Canada Olympic Park ("COP"), so roughly WSW of whence the picture was taken.
I’ve screenshotted a YYC planespotting map (credit
here) as well as one from Google Maps where I tried to draw a line from COP (the 0 km marker) to
roughly the spot where the photo might be from.
Anhang anzeigen 343147
Anhang anzeigen 343148
The photo of the plane taxiing likely comes from about the same location, but perhaps facing a bit more northwards. I won't bloat the thread with another big image, but from about the same spot near the airport, more towards the big park, maybe around where the map is labelled "Nose Hill Park", either the green one or the white one. That about tracks with not seeing the mountains, and the empty hill behind the houses. Note that much of the industrial type stuff between Deerfoot Trail (the big highway) and the airport wasn't there in 2009.
So the taxi photo most likely is the aircraft taxiing south from the terminal, for a takeoff to the north (runway 34).
Why does any of that matter?
I'm trying to look at ADS-B tracks to see if these help us nail the photos to a specific flight.
In the approach shot, the plane is coming from the south. So if it's the YQR flight as you theorize, the ADS-B track should show a landing from the south.
The
ADS-B track for WS237 is really weird. The field is at about 3,600 AMSL. It kind of looks like it's coming in for a landing from the north, then sort of bypasses the airport, but at a pretty low altitude. I don't know what to make of that. The ADS-B data isn't very good, because it doesn't go all the way to the ground. So maybe there's an error somewhere. But that track doesn't look right for either a landing from the north, or for coming around the airport to land from the south.
The
track for WS122 is also kind of strange. Again, poor data, with it only getting picked up at 10,000 feet. And that looks more like a runway 16 takeoff than runway 34. AC110, also to YYZ, took off just a few minutes later, and
here's what it looks like.
WS166 to YOW, which should have followed a similar path, looks more like AC110 than WS122. Could runway direction have switched sometime after WS237 landed, such that WS122 would have taken off on 18 instead of 34, then shifted again immediately after, resulting in AC110 taking off on 34? So I looked up a slightly earlier flight, and here's
WS132 to YWG. Again, it's first picked up more north and west of the airport, as opposed to WS122, which is picked up much farther south.
The track for WS122 isn't
impossible with a takeoff from 34, it just requires an earlier and/or steeper right turn of about 135 degrees, then a left turn to head more eastwards, vs the other flights taking a smoother turn SE.
How does that relate to the photo?
The taxi photo is definitely of a plane towards the south end of the complex, so it's not compatible with a runway 34 takeoff. So if WS122 did take off on 16 for some reason, it can't be the aircraft in question. But maybe the track is kind of crappy and that is the right one.
Where does this leave us?
Setting aside the possibility that WS122 was operated by an aircraft that had been at YYC overnight, other plausible arrivals would include 547 from YXE, 110 from YEG, 456 from YXX, 354 from YEG, and 150 from YVR. A few that would have been a bit tight but doable would be 952 from YYJ, 880 from YQQ, 653 from YYZ, and 551 from YHM. I ruled out 567 from YXU and 407 from YOW due to delays that would have made it difficult or impossible to operate 122.
Now, 547 was a through flight to YVR, so that's less likely, but it was also 23 minutes late leaving despite the inbound only being 7 minutes late, so could have been time for an aircraft swap. Aircraft type does reduce the likelihood of 110, 456 (both listed as 736 at FlightStats), and 653 (listed as 738), but that's not entirely reliable, so if we're looking for a 73G, I'd be hesitant to categorically rule out any of those.
I guess I don't have anything that rejects the C-FJWS hypothesis, but it's also not falling in to line all that neatly?
(and a rare AC E90 that I hadn't flown before, as far as I knew)
