A fairly rare shot of both of National's B747's (N77772 and N77773) in the same location, with a new DC-10 along with National Chairman Lewis B. "Bud" Maytag's Turbo Commander N8LB (parked closest to the hangar) and an unknown aircraft. The hangar was designed for two B747's and one DC-10 to be parked inside and the hangar doors can be closed behind them.
The hangar's cantilever roof is not supported by the electrically powered hangar doors; they can all be opened at the same time and the roof is supported by an 11-story office tower on the other side. This beautiful and very functional hangar was designed by my good friend Frances Telesca when he was in private practice as an architect and prior to his being hired in 1986 as the Aviation Department's Chief of Design. Frances retired in 2003 and died on December 8, 2005. The hangar is currently leased by American Airlines and they occupy a portion of the office tower on the other side.
The National B747's were sold, a year or two after this photo was taken, to Northwest Airlines and they became N620US and N621US respectively.
Why you won't see this photo on airliners.net: I occasionally get e-mails from aviation fans all over the world asking me why I don't post most of my old photos on airliners.net.
The reason is that airliners.net instituted anal screening standards lacking consistency where certain favored people have inferior shots accepted while better shots from others are rejected and I don't have the time to waste manipulating photos over and over to meet their nitpicking lack of standards for everyone. I would rather get as many photos as possible up onto the net on my own site where people can find them by doing Google, Yahoo, whatever searches based on airline name, aircraft type, tail number, etc.
Instead of selecting reasons to reject a photo airliners.net should be selecting reasons to accept a photo. In addition, it wasn't until 2005 or 2006 that the owner of airliners.net at the time finally developed a brain and decided that he was missing out on a tremendous amount of historical photos by rejecting photos that weren't perfect in the minds of his screeners. He then changed his years-long policy and started to waive the screening standards for old photos, after rejecting them including some of mine for years. Unfortunately a number of old photographers have passed on to the big airport in the heavens and their works will never be displayed unless their heirs take the time to preserve those photos and scan them someday which is doubtful. And, also unfortunate, is that a number of still-living old photographers like me were so turned off by airliners.net rejecting their current and old photos that they will never re-scan their works and resubmit to airliners.net so the owners can make money from them by advertising and other means on the site.
