Flight To NM

Left: Catalina Island, of the coast of Southern California.


I didn't get a window seat from SMF to LAX, but I did snag the last-available window seat from LAX to ABQ. So, I got some pictures.


Left: View of the Salton Sea, looking SSE, towards Mexico. Looks like an alien planet!

Below: Tablelands adjacent to I-17, north of Phoenix. If I'm not mistaken, there are some interesting Indian ruins down there.






Familiar streets of Payson, AZ.


Here's an airliner above us, and to our right, paralleling our path to ABQ.


Cinder cones and lava flows. Here, the cone is in the upper right, and the lava flow descended away from the cone, to the bottom left.


Two parallel dikes. Region of dikes and parklands in west-central NM. These dikes are amazingly-straight; running for miles!



This other airliner descends below us on the right, then in front of us and below, in order to get into queue for landing in ABQ first.


Flying into the Albuquerque metropolitan area.

Approaching ABQ, we ran abruptly into turbulence. The airliner was jumping all over the place!

One tactic pilots have of dealing with turbulence is to descend to lower altitudes (where eddy sizes tend to be smaller). So, we descended, but we kept the lower altitude even as we approached the city. We passed over ABQ at a surprisingly-low altitude, making an alarmingly-low-altitude arc over the city's northern suburbs as the plane bucked and kicked.


Left: Cottonwood Mall. Apparently it is not adequate to merely fly over the Mall: the pilot seems to intend that we shall fly through the mall. That will be a considerable surprise to the shoppers there!

Below: The old and new Corrales Rd. Bridges over the Rio Grande, plus the Montano Rd. Bridge.




Interstate 40, near Winrock, Coronado center, and all that.

The San Mateo, Louisiana, & San Pedro over-crossings are visible, as well as the closest over-crossing (Wyoming?)