Remarks: Typical British weather welcomes us into Manchester as we arrive from Mumbai (and Doha) as QR045 on a very very comfortable Airbus A330-200. Just to the left of the almost hidden Emirates tail, you can see some spotters enjoying their time on top of the T2 car park. They are probably there to shoot an Antonov An-124 Ruslan which was parked on the ramp. The Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747-400 visible here is G-VROY 'Pretty Woman'. With this shot, began a 40 day spotting marathon thanks to some of the best and genuine folks in the business, namely Murtaza Sattar, Nik French, Stu Doherty and M. Azizul Islam . Thanks a lot to Ian Gater for shooting my arrival!
Remarks: Flying in for runway 09 and far too low, but I am not complaining :-) Any lower, and this place would have become the St. Marteens of India! What you see below is the Western Express highway, and running parallel to it is the Western Railway (not visible). Later that week, I happened to be driving down this same stretch of road, when a Jet 77W appeared out of nowhere and to my astonishment was still lower than this, and flew RIGHT OVER us. I was doing about 75-80, and could only see the Triple7 for a fraction of a second. What an amazing feeling! Mom sitting besides me was literally stunned.
Remarks: This Swiss 343 with beautiful contrails flies under a lovely blue sky over Cardiff. Shot this one sitting in the backyard of my uncles house in South Glamorgan, Cardiff.
Remarks: There she is, lined up for takeoff amidst the beautiful scenery of the London countryside where LTN is located. The ATP was a modified version of the HS748, but its market share was taken away by other aircraft such as the Dash 8 and the ATR 42. Only 64 of these were ever built, and only 32 of them are in service now. Sad... but nice to catch them at LTN before they vanish! Thanks to Aziz anf Roy!
Remarks: The airport is just about to get busy as is our day! This was just the beginning of our 14+ hour long spotting session which included 4 airports and about 300 miles on the road. Thanks to Aziz for that! About 10 aircraft are seen on the ramp, just about to depart after one another. In the background, is Canary Wharf which is a large office and shopping development in East London, located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Canary Wharf tenants include major banks, such as Barclays, Credit Suisse, HSBC and Citigroup, law firms such as Clifford Chance, as well as news media and service firms, including Thomson Reuters, and Trinity Mirror. You can also see the Millennium Dome. The dome is the largest of its type in the world. Externally, it appears as a large white marquee with twelve 100 m-high yellow support towers, one for each month of the year, or each hour of the clock face, representing the role played by Greenwich Mean Time. In plan view it is circular, 365 m in diameter — one metre for each day of the year — with scalloped edges. It has become one of the United Kingdom's most recognisable landmarks.
Remarks: Making a 180 degree turn to get back to the terminal. Loads of Avros, Fokkers and Dash-8s in the background! Behind the terminal, is the London O2, a large entertainment area. Thanks to Aziz for this one!
Remarks: It was worth getting up at about 0330 in the morning and taking the night bus to the airport which takes about 1 hr. Finally after waiting for 4 hours in the hot sun, T2 was almost full with a mix of all kind of aircraft from all over the world! I had the pleasure of shooting each one of them individually as they came in or left. Here they are from the front: Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747-400 G-VAST 'Ladybird'; US Airways Airbus 333 N273AY; Onur Air MD-88 TC-ONN; Thompson 767-300 G-OBYJ; KLM Cityhopper Fokker 70 PH-KZK; Continental 757 N13138; First Choice 757 G-OOBG; Delta 767 N825MH; Qatar 332 A7-AEM; AirFrance 320 F-GKXF; FlyGlobespan 767 G-CDPT.
Remarks: The Ryanair 'Dreamliner' vacating the active. Isnt she beautiful! God knows why Ryanair have put the white nose cone.... We were waiting for her for a really long time, and when she did come in at about 1945, the sun was gone, the clouds had set in and it was raining. (Typical MAN weather :P) We were the ONLY two people in the Aviation Viewing park which was about to close in the next 10 mins. Thanks to Murt for holding my coat over my lens as I shot through the rain, and thanks to Nik for the heads up!
Remarks: The latest brand new 737NG for 9W on very short finals for Mumbai. She was delivered just last Sunday, exactly a week ago. This one happens to be one of the ETOPS variant. (Extended Twin Engine Operations). Would have been the first shot in the database, but Devesh beat me to it by just a couple of hours!
