12 Jun 2025 Weekly Series Throwback Thursday

Vintage FedEx Boeing 727 and DC-10's at Memphis

This post picks up the “Throwback Thursday” tradition, sharing memories.

FedEx Boeing 727 N254FE on Takeoff at Memphis in 2003 (view full res)

This is one of the first Throwback Thursday posts I’ve done in a while in my Weekly Series updates. I used to do these all the time, but today felt like the perfect day to bring back the tradition. For my Throwback Thursday posts, I go back into my Lightroom archives, pull out a photo, give it a fresh edit, add some new words, and bring it back into the light again.

Since it’s been a long time, I decided to do things a little differently. Instead of just re-editing one photo, I went back to an entire shoot and gave the whole thing a fresh look. This one was especially fun to put together.

Plane Spotting at Memphis Airport

All of these images were taken at Memphis International Airport on July 15, 2003—a day I remember well. The plane spotting location was a grassy hill just off the runway, offering a great view of the control tower in the background. At the time, Memphis was undergoing heavy construction on the airport and runways, so this spot was ideal for keeping all that chaos out of the frame.

This was a post-9/11 world, and much like the time when COVID was ending, paranoia was running high. On this particular day, someone called the Memphis police because “there was a guy with a camera taking photos of planes.” The police contacted the FBI, and both showed up at my truck just as I was finishing up. At least they waited until after sunset.

It wasn’t the kind of attention I was looking for, and yeah—it was a little nerve-racking. That said, it turned out to be the last time I had the chance to shoot at that location. Not necessarily because of the FBI (though I wasn’t eager to relive that experience), but because it felt like the right time to move on. I’d been photographing in Memphis for several years by that point, and we didn’t return again for a long time.

The FBI agents spoke with me for quite a while. I showed them my portfolio and a copy of an aviation magazine I’d recently been published in. Once they realized I was just doing what photographers do, they let me be, and everyone went about their business, but not after saying I should have called the mayor's office and police department before coming out.

I really loved the old Boeing 727 aircraft that FedEx used to fly. They were loud, dirty, inefficient—and beautiful. The McDonnell Douglas DC-10 freighter, on the other hand, was a majestic, massive machine that was incredible to watch during takeoff. It was so heavy and took forever to rotate. That single center landing gear was there for good reason.

Almost all of the aircraft featured in this post have likely been decommissioned by now. Very few, if any, are still flying. Some might still be parked out in the California desert, but many have surely been scrapped for good.

Most of these images have never been posted online before, so they’re fresh to the internet. Lightroom’s latest tools—especially masking and shadow recovery—have allowed me to salvage photos that were almost unsalvageable back in 2003 (the sunset and night hanger shots were two that were only usable at this time in Lightroom history). One of my favorite shots is of the nose of a decommissioned B727. Over time, people started writing and drawing on it while it sat abandoned. You can still see names and even a little airplane sketch on the side.

I've included a few other planes like the Airbus A300 and A310 and a Russian monster that landed that day. Other than those, these are all B727 and MD DC-10's from 2003. You might notice below that, yes, Memphis tower did change runways mid-day on this particular day. Enjoy the gallery below!