I agree- that dark band is in no way 'natural'. If you look at the smokey stuff, you can see a separate layer in the picture underneath which is another picture of a 747 taking off into a cloudy background. The cloudy background is visible through the smokey layer, yet a smokey foreground like that would completely obscure the background- you are obviously looking through some depth of mistiness.
I believe it is a simple merge of 2 pictures- I think the foreground wispy smoke is from a Photoshop plugin. If that's the case, to try to pass it off as 'look at my wonderful photograph' is disgraceful. It's a work of art, like those pictures of high altitude jets flying across the face of the sun or the moon, not a 'photograph'.
If you search for his other photographic contributions, it consists of a picture of an Airbus 320, and that's it!