A Nikon camera glued to his face, Bernie Leighton leans out of an open-sided helicopter into a chilly breeze as he focuses on his unsuspecting quarry.
The celebrity in his lens is no Kardashian. It’s Etihad Airways’ first 787 Dreamliner, parked outside Boeing’s (BA) plant in Everett, Wash., and an object of desire among plane spotters for a new, secrecy-shrouded paint scheme.
Leighton is angling for Internet fame as he stalks the 787, already one of the most-chronicled industrial products on the planet for its futuristic design and troubled start. Selling the first aerial shot of the shimmering silver-and-gold Etihad plane to fan sites or a trade publication could also more than cover the cost of his $500 copter ride.
“I’d say there’s monetary reward, but not really,” says the 27-year-old Leighton. “It’s mostly about pride, about keeping my streak going.”
In almost five years of semiprofessional plane spotting, Leighton has snapped more than 35,000 photos and garnered at least 7 million Internet views. He’s among the growing ranks of “avgeeks,” people who gather and share images of aircraft with the zeal displayed by enthusiasts pursuing rare comic books or baseball cards.
Their passion creates opportunities as well as challenges for Boeing. Constant exposure in fans’ pictures means the world’s largest planemaker must play hide-and-seek with new commercial projects. Photos also can signal a factory hiccup, as when a buildup of undelivered jets outside Boeing plants preceded the disclosure of hairline wing cracks on some 787s in March.
If Airbus (AIR:FP) wants to see the latest from its U.S. rival, it can rely on photo stalkers around Boeing’s plant and neighboring Paine Field in Everett. They will climb trees or fences to eyeball newly assembled aircraft under tow to the paint shop to get their livery, as an airline’s markings are known. In 2011, Boeing swathed the first passenger 747-8 jumbo in paper to thwart peeping eyes. “When your factory, paint hangars, and delivery center sit directly adjacent to a public airport, keeping a customer’s livery a surprise is next to impossible,” says Doug Alder, a Boeing spokesman.
Those documenting Boeing’s factory output are a subset of enthusiasts—mostly male—who feel compelled to meticulously track heavy machinery from locomotives to steel mills, says George Hamlin, a former Airbus executive who’s now an aviation consultant.
Hamlin was captivated by Boeing’s humpbacked 747 jumbo in the late 1960s. Then, he says, “there were few if any spotters or photographers.” Over the decades Hamlin has amassed more than 20,000 slides of aircraft and another 8,000 or so digital shots. He’s watched the ranks of jet enthusiasts swell with the advent of the Internet.
“It’s a labor of love. I’d like to keep this information as current as possible for as long as possible, until they stop building it.”
Boeing has gone from ignoring avgeeks to courting them. The Future of Flight Aviation Center near the Everett plant is a magnet for plane fans, drawing 270,000 visitors a year. Shutterbugs flock to an observation deck overlooking a Paine Field runway where Boeing test pilots put widebodies through their paces. Boeing also opens up its doors for Aviation Geek Fest, an annual gathering that includes a chance to wander the Everett factory, the world’s largest building by volume, according to Sandy Ward, the center’s marketing director. Tickets sold out in three minutes for this year’s event. “We’ll have people sitting around the world—it might be midnight in Shanghai—hitting refresh, refresh,” Ward says. “You’ll have virtual fistfights breaking out.”
Boeing’s involvement reflects a shift in its marketing, from ignoring the avgeeks to inviting bloggers to aircraft unveilings and events once reserved for credentialed reporters. “Aviation Geek Fest is an opportunity for Boeing to embrace people with a passion for airplanes,” Boeing’s Alder says. “Events like these connect us with an enthusiastic audience for our products in ways that wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago.”
For plane spotters, the Dreamliner continues to inspire a photo fascination so intense that fans recently vied for snapshots of the scarlet engine nacelles (the housing visible under the wing) on a Virgin Atlantic 787.
The attention is “an accidental Boeing creation,” says Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at consultant Teal Group. Boeing’s first all-new aircraft of the 21st century, the Dreamliner fired imaginations with its plastic-composite hull, then grabbed headlines as supply-chain snarls delayed the initial delivery by three years, to 2011. It was the first jet whose development played out on Twitter (TWTR), and it became a focus of posts by amateur blogger Jon Ostrower, now a Wall Street Journal reporter.
Many of those who tuned in for the early Dreamliner drama have stuck around, says David Parker Brown, who founded airlinereporter.com in 2008. He was inspired by Ostrower’s social media success, as was Uresh Sheth, a Wall Street banker who writes the All Things787 blog.
In his spare time, Sheth compiles tables tracking the progress of every 787 assembled and delivered. Sheth says he relies on tidbits shared by “volunteers,” not leaked internal Boeing documents. He cross-checks each data point, often by looking up photos from Dreamliner followers at Boeing’s factories in Washington and South Carolina. “It’s a labor of love,” Sheth says. “I’d like to keep this information as current as possible for as long as possible, until they stop building it.” It’s no easy task. Through Nov. 5, Boeing had handed over 204 Dreamliners—and had a backlog of 850 more.
Spotters also regularly camp out around Airbus’s factory complex and adjoining Toulouse-Blagnac Airport in France. Competition was especially fierce earlier this year when Airbus pilots were running braking and take-off tests for the new A350 widebody jet, a Dreamliner rival set to make its commercial debut in December. Fans were eager to win bragging rights by snapping photos and tweeting ahead of Airbus’s official dispatches. “It’s not that there’s anything sensitive, but when the images appear privately, that takes the surprise from our own photo release,” says Airbus spokesman Justin Dubon. Brazil’s Embraer (ERJ), the No. 4 planemaker, restricts photography at its main factory at São José dos Campos, which is within a closed compound.
As an infant, plane spotter Leighton lived under an approach flight path to St. John’s International Airport, in Newfoundland. At 18, he began haunting the forums on Airliners.net; gradually he got the nerve to post his own photos. Now he’s motivated by friendly rivalry to land “the first of anything,” from shots of a new model to a new livery, he says. His specialty: early aerial perspectives of these jets. A day job with flexible hours—Leighton declines to name his profession—pays for his plane-spotting habit.
Using Sheth’s production charts, Leighton monitored the Etihad 787’s progress at the factory over the summer. His interest grew as word leaked that the jet would feature an edgier look, part of a branding makeover for the Abu Dhabi-based carrier. Etihad heard the buzz about its new livery and hosted a special nighttime unveiling in a live Webcast in late September to thwart plane spotters.
That still left a photographic “first”—an overhead shot—to be claimed by Leighton. So he found himself in a four-seat Robinson R44 helicopter clattering toward the Boeing plant on the first sunny day after the Etihad fete.
As pilot Daiichi Takeuchi maneuvered into place about 900 feet over the field, Leighton steadied his camera and went to work. He was done 35 seconds later. His photo of the jet’s abstract desert-themed paint job has been viewed more than 36,000 times on Airliners.net and drawn more than 5,400 “likes” in postings on AirlineReporter and Etihad’s Facebook (FB) page. “No one breaks even,” Leighton says. “We do this regardless.”
