I saw Air France's 777-300ER today out on the tarmac of Williams-Gateway late this afternoon. I'm assuming it's under test runs because IWA is not known to be an international gateway (pun intended), and we get no commercial traffic with the exception of a couple of charter flights once a week or so.

The aircraft was still under North American registration and had the word "EXPERIMENTAL" printed on the top edge of the vertical stabilizer. When I went to check it out after class, there were quite a few people gathered around it inspecting the region where the tail skid is located.

I was late to class because I was busy taking a few pictures of this beauty; this took me a while since the aircraft was so long I couln't get a decent shot without including the fence in front of me and couple of trees that got in the way. Unfortunately, I only had two more exposures left in my cameres. What a shame. Man, I wish I could just go past the reinforced metal fence and climb aboard the aircraft just to look inside it.