How do you determine what type of plane you are looking at?

Question

Say you are at the airport and you see planes landing Boeings and Airbus's how do you determine if it is a 737 747 757 767 777 or A320 A340?

Answer 1

737...Most 737 seen today have engine nacelles that have a noticeable flattened bottom and not round like most other engine openings .  This design was made necessary when high bypass engines were fitted to the existing airframe allowing the engines to still be clear of foreign object injection.

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http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=13...

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747...This huge four engine plane is unmistakable because of it's size and upper deck area.  

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http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=13...

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757... Built as a 727 replacement the 757 is a narrow body design.  The long narrow fuselage and extended legs of the landing gear give it a stork like look when landing.

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http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=13...

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767....The 767 is a wide body aircraft although not quite as wide as the 747.  It looks a lot like most of the airbus wide body twin engine airliners.  The way to distinguish it from the others is the cockpit windows and lack of the wing tip fence seen on most all airbus aircraft.

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http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=13...

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777...The 777 is a true wide body on the level of the 747.  The distinguishing feature is the six wheeled landing gear and blade tail cone with the A.P.U. exhaust on one side.

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http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=13...

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A320...is a small narrow body aircraft very similar in size to the 737.  They have round engine nacelles (unlike the 737-300) and wing tip fences.

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http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=13...

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A340...Is a large wide body airliner with four engines (rare) that does not have the upper deck like the 747.

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http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=13...

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Answer 2

By he size and shape,engine placement and the number of engines,wing placement and shape,landing gear size and shape,shape of the vertical stabilizer,if it has winglets,but most of all experience.

Answer 3

Shape of the winglets is one of many ways. Shape of the tailcone is what helps me the best. they all have very suttle differences. Nose,outboard landing gear doors. Some have there type painted somewhere on them too. Shape of nose and or windshields. For instance the only way to tell a Gulfstream 2 and 3 apart is there windshields. A 2 has flat panel glass where a 3 has curved windshield panes.

Answer 4

Read the magazines, look at the pictures, check them out on the internet, and just keep doing  it.  They are all very different after you know what to look for.

It won't happen overnight, and you have to be really interested.  So just check them out and keep practicing.

Answer 5

Years of being in the aviation industry.

Answer 6

I fly a lot, and after a while i can tell, as well as sites like http://www.airliners.net

Answer 7

Like other said its just something people are used to seeing all are noticeable different, the 757 and 767 are probably the closest to eachother and even then there are differences.

Airbus's you can usually tell because of the nose of he aircraft for me. Boeings just use to seeing them. Also the A340 is a noticably different plane because of a 4 engine single level aircraft. 747 just cause of its icon status because the second level and 4 engines. The 737 small two engine and the nose is different then an Airbus A320. The 777 because of the massive engines, wide, body, and nose.

757 Medium size, longer twin engine, also seems a little bit narrower.

Answer 8

They look different =) Check out this gallery and try to remember how they look like:

http://www.airplanes.se/gallery.php

just compare the size and number of engins of these Boeing/Airbus planes:

http://www.airplanes.se/gallery.php?list...

http://www.airplanes.se/gallery.php?list...

Answer 9

Here is one way......

http://www.airliners.net