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Qatars Amiri Flight in LUX

November 1st is a public holiday here in LUX. That's something new for me as in The Netherlands it's a normal working day. So an unexpected day off for me! The weather was nice and two special aircraft where due to visit the airport. The first one already arrived the evening before, in the dark, so no photo's possible due to it's bad parking postion. It was an Airbus A340-500 (A7-HHH) of Qatar Amiri Flight,  arriving using callsign "Amiri 1". A340s are very rare around here and this VIP-aircraft was of course very welcome!

Thursday it departed for a very short flight to Liege (flying time must be something of 20-25 minutes!). For such a short hop (and probably having not a lot of pax on board) it needed very few meters for it's take-off:

Later in the day "Amiri 6" arrived, this being an Airbus A310 (A6-AFE) in the new Qatar Airways colours:

besides both Qataris normal traffic was nice again also. Quite a few freighters passed my lens. For me this China Cargo 747-400F was an highlight as I did not see it before:

back to the Netherlands this afternoon to pick up my last stuff. If weather permits I'll be back at the airport this Sunday.

Peter

Night work

Just a short entry as I was only at the airport (Luxemburg) for 15 minutes this evening to catch the Iceland Express MD-90. This company started operations to LUX in september and can be seen every Tuesday and Friday evening. Today was my first change to try to get it and it went ok as it was parked in a good position to take a night shot:

It was rather quiet on the passanger ramp and the only other aircraft that could be photographed was this Luxair 737-700:

That's it for today!

Peter

The Big Move

It has been a while since I had time to update this blog but with reason: I moved from the Northern part of Holland to another city and country! Since last week views like this are common out of my living room window:

Nice, isn't it? A few months ago I employer announced that a big customer of ours would move to Luxemburg but that this customer realy wanted us to keep servicing their equipment. I did not have to think long to go to Luxemburg with this customer, also my partner liked the idea so after a lot of preparations this month we finaly moved to our new home country.

Last Saturday almost all of our furniture, books, cds, stuffed animals, etc. were loaded into a big van and driven to Luxemburg by a spotter friend (and two strong and helpfull women). We followed with a loaded car and unpacked everything a few hours later at our new appartment.

Sunday morning my partner and the helpfull women went for a tour of the city and the driver and me went to the airport. Well, quite a change from my old airport. On Sunday you could expect at Groningen/Eelde one Boeing 737 of Transavia and an occasional bizjet or so. Luxemburg is something completly different! During a few hours of spotting we logged 14 cargo 747s, 2 Antonov 12s, 1 MD-11 freighter, 1 Antonov 26 and off course some passanger airliners!

First one to be photographed was this Meridian Cargo Antonov 12, UR-CAJ:

China Cargo is a regular visitor at LUX with the MD-11:

A second Antonov 12 arrived in the afternoon, this one belonging to Shovkoviy Shlyah:

Newcommer from Singapore is Jett8. The 747 arrived from Manchester and picked up some freight at LUX:

Last one is this Tesis 747 in basic El Al-colours. It was on the maintenance ramp and unfortunatly did not move the whole day. This photo is taken from a rather large distance so not the best quality:

So it's back to work here in Luxemburg. I hope to have a great time here and see a lot more of these great cargo aircraft around here!

Peter

Champ car weekend at the airport

For the first time a "big" car race took place at the TT-circuit in Assen, quite near Groningen Airport. On september 2nd a race from the Champ car world series would start and we expected a lot of extra traffic at the airport.

It was a bit disappointing to see only a few business jets and smaller props. We hoped for a fully booked apron with some exotic aircraft. Some expected aircraft went to Amsterdam instead! Well, what is a distance of 200 kilometer for an American... Amsterdam sounds probably more familiar than Groningen, only 20 kilometers from the circuit.

But, we had some nice visitors eventualy!
On friday morning the family of Minardi boss Paul Stoddart arrived with this very nice 737-200 in full OzJet colours:

After all 6 (SIX!) passangers disembarked the aircraft was on it's way again.

Whilst waiting for more visitors, the Transavia-flight from Faro showed up to be PH-HZR with SpiceJet tail. A nice surprise!

A boring afteroon followed and the weather was becoming more worse. Finaly, shortly after 5pm an exotic bizjet arrived, a Challenger 604 of the Aussie Wineyard racing team, with some kangaroos painted on the tail. As you can see, the runway was very wet when it arrived:

On saturday no more Champ car visitors arrived. However, two nice smaller aircraft showed up. First a Piper Cheyenne III arriving on an ambulance flight from Vienna:

We where surprised to see another Australian aircraft arriving, this time with an VH- registration! It had nothing to do with the races; a Gippsland GA-8 Airvan on delivery from Cranfield (UK) to Lithuania.

On to sunday, the day of the races. Early morning some helicopters visited for refueling, but way too early for me :-)  The television helicopter showed up in the afternoon for some refueling, this time being PH-HWH of Heli Holland:

Also, the "Aussie" Challenger returned from Luton, where it went saturday-evening. This time it was dry :-)

And finaly another OzJet 737-200 arrived to take back two Minardi passengers. Breaking all turn-around records as it was airborne within 10 minutes after landing! Nice to hear the thundering sound of a -200, becoming rare these days!

After it's departure, rain came pouring down and the spotting-weekend was over. Next year Assen will again see Champ Car races, maybe bringing some more traffic to our airport.

Peter

slides...

When I started aviation photography, I started making slides (as that was cheaper than color-prints!). For some years I also collected slides taken by other photographers. Years ago I stopped doing so as making my own slides was far more fun! But I still have a lot of slides not made by myself around here in the house. For some years I visited aviation hobby fairs around the country to get rid of them, but still more than 1000 are left!

Maybe some of the readers here are interested in slides? If so, download a list at my website (http://www.vliegadvies.nl/jetstar) or request a list via e-mail.

To make this short entry complete some scanned slides from my own collection. Wow, time flies!

Back to 1990. Dan Air London used to fly scheduled services on the route Cardiff-Bristol-Amsterdam-Berlin in the 80's. The Hawker Siddely 748 was a regular visitor at Schiphol airport those days. This picture was taken during the last operation days of the 748. Dan Air merged into British Airways in 1992 if I remember correctly.

Alia, The Royal Jordanian Airline, later renamed to just Royal Jordanian operated three Boeing 747-200's during the 80's. And a large fleet of Lockheed TriStars. This photo of JY-AFS was taken at Amsterdam in 1984.

Last one for today, PK-GSB of Garuda Indonesian Airways in the old colour scheme. Recently Garuda was banned from EU airspace. However, services to Europe by Garuda where suspended already a few years back.

Peter

Stockholm trip

It has been a while since I last updated my "spottersblog". But now it's time for a new story! Two weeks ago me and my partner made a short trip to Stockholm. For me it was the first visit to the city, after having visited the airports Arlanda, Bromma and Skavsta before!

Some three weeks ago we booked our flight with Ryanair, for only EUR 20 including taxes etc. per person. Departure airport was Bremen in Germany. Bremen has recently become a new Ryanair base and is as far from our home town Groningen as Amsterdam/Schiphol. Getting to Bremen is easier as to Amsterdam as you don't have the infamous Dutch trafficjams around Amsterdam. Also parking at Bremen is a lot cheaper. After arriving at the airport (way too early due to lack of trafficjams...) we did a quick look in the -empty- Ryanair terminal:

Ryanair has transformed a former hangar into a basic terminal. Staff is only there from two hours before each flight. Despite a large group of Mexicans traveling to Stockholm as well, check in went quite smooth. After security we had a good view of the apron and saw our aircraft, Boeing 737-8AS EI-DHC arrive from Riga:

Ryanair does everything to sell "extra's". One of the new features is "priority boardig". For EUR 6 per flight you can get a special ticket which gives you the "right" go on board in the first group of passengers. We had quite some fun laughing at the 80 people who where in this "priority line". If everyone buys such a ticket it makes no sense anymore :-)

We boarded the aircraft in the last group but got our self a nice window seat in the back of the aircraft. As Ryanair has quick turn-around times we did not have to wait long for departure. Just after take-off I made this shot of Airbus "Super Transporter" F-GSTD parked at the Airbus factory:

The flight went smooth over an overcast Germany and Danmark. Upon entering Swedish airspace skies went clear and the visability was extremely good.

Clear air turbulance became more of a problem making it a shakey last 15 minutes of the flight. The landing was perhaps the worst I ever experienced! For some moments I tought the pilot would break off the approach and go around. We landed way behind the thershold and the crew had to use a lot of reverse power to make the aircraft stop before the end of the runway.

In Stockholm we did some sightseeing but Friday June 15th there was some time for spotting at Stockholms City Airport Bromma. This airport is located in a suburb of the city and the approach is rather spectacular with aircraft up to size BAe 146 flying low over the houses and industrie. As we got off the metro on the "wrong" side of the airport we had to walk quite a while before reaching the airport. After climbing trough an unexpected nice part of nature in the middle of the city we got a good view over the airport and approach path. From this position interesting approach shots could be made. First to appear was this Fokker 50, operated by Skyways:

It seems that Skyways has applied this anonymous scheme to all of its aircraft operating into Bromma, but with different colours. Saab 340 SE-LJL:

Some Fokkers in full Skyways colours where seen overflying the city bound for Arlanda. One of the other frequent airlines at Bromma is Trollhattan based Golden Air. Here Saab 2000 SE-KXK is lining up for departure:

"home carrier" is Malmö Aviation, operating with a fleet of BAe 146's/Avro RJ100's to various destinations in Scandinavia. Here SE-DSV landing:

After these landing shots we walked around the airport to the terminal. Just outside the terminal is a "spotters hill" which gives again some good views. Only problem was the sun, this position is better suiteable for morning-photography. But, this did not prevent me from shooting the Swedish Footbal Union logojet of Malmö Aviation!

We had a drink in the terminal and headed back to the city on a direct bus. Bromma is a nice airport with some nice traffic, but after two hours traffic is repeating it self.

Before our flight back to Bremen I had some time at Skavsta airport. Not much going on there but this Saab Viggen fighter (in use as an instructional airframe at the local technical school) was a nice surprise:

Another surprise was this exotic Piper Aerostar. Apperantly based in Sweden during the summer and in it's homecountry Mexico in the winter!

The flight back (again on EI-DHC) was ok but lasted some 20 minutes more than our flight to Stockholm due to some heavy showers near Bremen airport. Very nice to see these clouds from close-by.

So, I finaly got to Stockholm!

Peter

Sunny Schiphol!

Thursday the 15th of march, I had a day off from work as it was supposed to be the last sunny day for some time. As of today nasty weather is expected again and temperatures in the next week will be as low as 6 degrees centigrade during daytime. So I decided to take advantage of the last nice sunny day and go for some spotting. Some options where open: stay at Groningen Airport as a Smart Wings 737 was expected from Bodø, Norway and see a boring Transavia 737 arriving from Las Palmas. Due to the daily traffic-jams destinations as Frankfurt, Brussels or Düsseldorf were out of the question as we had to get up ridiculously early. Amsterdam/Schiphol? Also traffic jams in that direction, but with a bit of planning things would be possible. Leaving Groningen around 07.30 would mean arriving in the last bits of traffic jams around 09.00 and possibly no traffic problems for the last bit.

Our traffic-scheduled turned out to be ok and we arrived at Schiphol's east-ramp around 09.30. A freshly painted Aeroflot-Nord 737-500 was waiting for us, ready for delivery to Arghangelsk.

It finaly departed to it's new Russian owner around 17.30. In the background you can see all white Fokker 100 PH-OFO. This Fokker for KLM Cityhopper arrived the day before from the Fokker-Services facility at Woensdrecht. It was towed to the paintshop an hour later to get it's KLM colours. Besides these aircraft some bizjets where photographed before we headed for the "Polderbaan" (runway 18R) to get some landing traffic.

Light was good, traffic a bit boring but some nice things turned up. "new" for me was Click Air. This spanish low-cost airline started services to AMS just a few weeks ago.

To our surprise, a Smart Wings 737 showed up, arriving on a Transavia-flight. Later, it departed to... Bodø! Indeed, the same aircraft visited our home-airport later this day, after dark as it was delayed. So looking back, staying at home was not a good choice!

Around 11.30 the big problem we always have at AMS appeared: runway changes. According to the ATIS "our" runway 18R was main landing runway, but most aircraft landed on the secundary runway, 27 and even on runway 18C! Time to change position for us to runway 24 to get some take-off shots. Probably one of our last visitis to the "spottersplaats" as due to construction of new cargo ramps it will only be a matter of weeks before this position is history :-(

Take-off traffic was nice, with some great freighters. And I know some freighter-fans are reading this, so here some photo's! First the Emirates 747-400F. A regular visitor for some years now, but this was realy the first time I was able to shoot one under good light conditions!

Rather new is this 747-400 freighter of Martinair, PH-MPQ is their second but the first one that came across my lens:

Jade Cargo flies to Schiphol since last August, but recently got two more factory-new 747-400ERF's. B-2441 is their latest:

Back to the Polderbaan again later in the afternoon to get more arrivals. The sun was now ok on the other side of the runway. And more freighters! Qatar Airways recently repainted their A300 freighter A7-AFB in new colours:

I received a text-message on my mobile phone that the Transavia flight at Groningen was cancelled and the pax would be transported by bus from AMS. Moments later this Transavia flight called at our scanner and I noticed a foreign accent. So, maybe we could expect a sub-charter? And indeed, HV166 was operated by Travel Service 737-800 OK-TVA. It would be a nice visitor at Groningen, but as we were at AMS we were very pleased to see it here!

The light was getting low but there was still enough light to take photo's so we stayed longer than expected along the runway. Evening traffic jams started again (we actualy could see them from the runway!) so going home was of no use.

JAL changed their equipment to AMS into the 777-200ER last autumn, but due to the short winter days and it's late arrival I did not see it before. I find the 777 one of the mighties looking airliners, just look at the engine size!

More tripple-seven action in the last sunlight of the day. Finaly got the colourfull Kenya Airways 777, arriving from Nairobi at 18.20 hrs.

Just before darkness finaly fell probably the most interesting but at least the most surprising visitor of the day arrived: Evergreen International's "Supertanker". A 747 converted to fire bomber! During the winter season the 747 is used on "regular" flights but I never expected it to show up here! As far as I know it was a flight for the US defence.

I needed to set my camera to 400ISO to get a good shot as the sun was already behind the horizon.

Fun wasn't over after dark! At the east-ramp some new bizjets arrived and a Austrian Dornier 328JET was present, bringing some "ski-victims" from the alps. My spotting mate had a tripod with him so I could do this shot:

The last photo for today was a Martinair 767 (actualy the last one in the "classic" colours) getting some maintenance in front of their hangar:

A long and well spent day at the airport. Traffic jams where gone and we reached Groningen in less than 2 hours.

Sunny Brussels

Ha, finaly a sunny weekend-day and nothing to stop me to go to an airport.

The choice for today was Brussels International as it was a long time back since I spent a full day of spotting over there and a lot of news was to be seen. One of the new things off course was Brussels Airlines, the follow up of SN Brussels and Virgin Express.

Runway 25L was used for almost all langdings up to 15.00 hrs so we spent most of the day shooting landing traffic under a blue sky. Two airlines high on my wish-list for some time showed up, first one being Afriqiyah Airlines from Libya:

This example, S5-AAB, is leased from Adria Airways.
The other "wish-list" airlines was Etihad from the UAE. Again perfect light when it arrived:

We got a lot of Belgian BAe 146's in different colours: SN Brussels, SN Brussels "Mail", SN Brussels "Sun Factor 06" and some in the new Brussels Airlines colours. The 737's however decided to land on the parallel runway. Except for one, OO-VEH, a rare 737-300 with winglets:

A nice extra today was an A330-200 of Eurofly (still with Football 2006 stickers) operating a charter to Point-a-Pitre. It came in on a ferry-flight from Milan:

After the Eurofly we headed back to the airport and spent some time on top of the new car-park 3. The top-level gives some nice views over the airport and also on part of the SN maintence aerea. Parked over there was an ex-Air Madrid Airbus A330-300, waiting for a new operator.

The mess you see in front of the Airbus are rests of the big hangar fire of May last year. On the next shot you can clearly identify parts of at least two different A320's. Strange they didn't clean it up...

Later in the afternoon it became more cloudy and traffic realy slowed down. But the first sunny day spotting of 2007 was finaly a fact!

Peter

Finaly

It's already past halfway February and this is only my second blog entry for 2007... No time during (sunny) weekdays and every weekend dark weather. Spotting is not going that well for me this year so far.

But today finaly some fair weather and an spare hour from work. So between 12.00 and 13.00 I went to Groningen/Eelde to get the scheduled flights of Eastern and City Star.

For a change I went to another location along runway 23. City Star, the trice weekly flight from Stavanger arrived on time:

The Eastern flight from Norwich landed while I was at the restaurant terrace but due to bad light conditions I didn't take a shot there and waited for it to depart. Short turn-around times for both Eastern and City Star as SAAB 2000 G-CDKA in special "Aberdeen" colours departed within half an hour after it's arrival:

I had a special reason to go to the airport as I was informed that a Czech Embraer Legacy would arrive around this time. And indeed, a few minutes before 13.00 hrs Grossmann Air Service EMB-135BJ OK-KKG touched down with some nice sunshine:

The last photo for today was the City Star Dornier departing back to Stavanger:

Hope to be blogging more soon than the last few weeks. Groningen/Eelde did get it's share of nice visitors during January and February but I wasn't there... But things can change!

First trip of the year

Already two weeks in 2007 and I didn't get my camera out. Until yesterday. A friend invited me to join him on a "clubflight" to Germany. I had some doubts as the weather was very bad the last few weeks with a heavy storm passing over The Netherlands last week. But he was very optimistic and indeed, yesterday morning the skies where clear!

Two aircraft where booked for the flight, Piper Archer PH-TGK and Cessna 172 PH-TGH. We met the other participants at the clubhouse of the NNAC at Groningen/Eelde around 09.00. There where still some strong winds but the forecast was that the wind speed would reduce during the day. For our first leg, from Groningen to Hannover, the strong wind was in our tail so we could take advantage of it, reducing the flyingtime.

Just before 10.00 we were airborn with PH-TGK. After take off from runway 23 we made a left turn, direct on course to Hannover. Here an overview of the airport, a completly empty ramp, sadly, an usual sight on Sundaymornings:

The wind was indeed strong and to get some more speed we climbed to 5500 feet (Flight Level 55), VFR just above some scattered clouds. Always a beautifull sight, sunlight on the clouds.

After some 55 minutes we reached Hannover Airport and touched down on runway 27R, the longest runway at the airport. Altough the General Aviation apron was almost empty, we where directed to a remote spot by the follow me car.

A few minutes after us PH-TGH landed and we went to the terminal for a cup of coffee. Traffic at the airport was quite slow but this nice Tupolev 214 came accross my lens, sadly in bad light conditions:

After the coffee we went back to the G.A. terminal. Before heading back to our aircraft we where thoroughly inspected by a security officer. Even G.A. crew don't escape to those ridiculous inspections. Take off took place from runway 27R again but before take off a local took a nice photo of our aircraft. I am in the back, but not realy good visable: click on this link for the photo.

Next stop was Sankt Michaelisdom, along the river Elbe, some 80 kilometers North-West of Hamburg. A nice little airport with a short runway of only 800 meters. But with a strong wind, almost in runway dircetion this was no problem. The flight to Skt. M. was quite bumpy! My head hit the roof of the aircraft a few times. Luckily I was wearing an headset :-)

As it was way past lunchtime we decided to go the the airfields restaurant where a nice lady prepared a good lunch for us.
We planned another stop on the route back to Groningen, either at Wilhelmshaven (runway direction not good as too much crosswind would prevent a safe landing) or at Bremerhaven but due to "end of daylight period" at 17.00 hrs and more wind than predicted by the met-office we decided to go straight back to Groningen. Aircrafts where changed and I borded Cessna PH-TGH.

Indeed headwinds where strong, our groundspeed was below 55 kts from time to time. Changing our altitude didn't win much speed so the trip to Groningen took more than one hour and 30 minutes. Enroute I took this photo of the harbour of Cuxhaven:

... and this one from the Chiquita banana-boat heading for Germany with -probably- a lot of bananas on board!

our decision to skip the extra stop was a good one, we wouldn't made it before the end of daylight if we did! Now we arrived just less than half an hour before VFR flying wasn't legal anymore. And indeed, the light was dying out very quickly on the last few miles of our flight.

Just before landing we noticed how much rain has fallen in the last months. The fields in Groningen are very wet!

And so the first trip of the year came to an end. A quick cup of coffee in the clubhouse and back home again.

Peter

More memories

Welcome at my first blog in 2007!

More memories today, as I see many other spottersblog bloggers scanning old pictures I tought it was a good idea to show some more oldies.

Today I will take you back in time at Amsterdam Airport. The first photo is taken in June 1984, I was 12 and it was the first time I went to AMS with a camera (the old Praktica "L"). CP Air (later renamed Canadian and merged into Air Canada) was a daily guest at AMS with several daily flights to Canadian destinations. Most flights where operated by the DC-10 but also the 747 was a regular visitor. Their radio callsign used to be "Empress". Nice colours!

We travel on in time to 1987, when Aerolineas Argentinas was a newcomer to AMS. It added nicely to the other South American airlines which could be seen every Saturday afternoon between 16.00 and 18.00: VIASA and VARIG. All three airlines no longer serve Amsterdam. On the photo LV-MLR in the classic Aerolineas scheme:

the last two photo's where taken in 1993. MEA served AMS for some years, mainly with the Airbus A310 but sometimes a Boeing 707 could be seen. As far as I know MEA was the last scheduled airline to operate pax 707's to AMS.

Freighters, just love them. During the early nineties the mighty Short Belfast of Heavy Lift, the Fred. Olsen Electra's and the Air Bridge Vanguard/Merchantmans could be seen almost daily, operating cargo flights on behalf of KLM. All history now! Here Merchantman G-APEJ "Ajax" lands on runway 06 on a bright and sunny day:

As the weather here in Holland is bad lately I didn't visit any airports so you just have to do it with these old shots, hope you like them!

Peter

Last day of the year

My last entry for this year! Went to my local airport, Groningen/Eelde this afternoon. Besides the Transavia charterflight to Las Palmas there was some general aviation traffic. Parachutists where dropped from a Cessna 207 (PH-ZZF) and this Beech Bonanza of the KLM Flight Academy (based at Groningen) returned from an overland flight:

A nice surprise was this Spanish Citation II, initialy expected to arrive around 16.30 (when the lights are out!) but rescheduled for 14.30, giving the few spotters present this afternoon a chance to get it in daylight. Spanish aircraft are quite rare here!

But who would be on board on such a flight? Not a lot of "business" going on here on the last day of the year... So before it arrived we speculated about this flight and concluded that the passanger must be someone famous :-)
And indeed, when the door opened a "famous Dutchman" was on board, the international soccer player Ruud van Nistelrooij! I am not familiar with soccer, but according to the others he is very good and famous... Well, here a picture of him saying goodby to the captain of EC-JON:

Hope you all have a good newyears eve and a great 2007!

Peter

Retro: Portuguese airliners in the 1980's and 1990's

This week I got a new slide scanner. Before the digital age I made slides for about 20 years (yes I started very early!). I won't be scanning my complete collection of some 17.000 slides but pick out some nice examples and maybe make a retro-page on my website. But from time to time some older photo's may appear right here on my weblog. To start, some photo's of Portuguese airliners as there seem to be a lot of Portuguese readers on this site!

Quality of these old photo's is off course not the same as we can expect today. The earliest shots where taken with a Praktica camera without light-meter. Most of the time Fuji slide-film was used.
The first shot is a TAP Boeing 707 departing from a very wet runway 24 at Amsterdam/Schiphol late march 1985. A rainy day but even in those days a passenger 707 was rare! Pictured is CS-TBG, built and delivered in 1970.

Another TAP aircraft is this Boeing 727-82C registered CS-TBO. This one was delivered in 1967. The short body 727 left TAP's fleet in september 1988. So I was just in time when I took the photo in april 1988 at Amsterdam!

Also from 1988 is this photo of an Air Atlantis Boeing 727-200 (CS-TCI). Air Atlantis was the charter division of TAP and operated for some seasons in the late 80's/early 90's. The photo was taken at Hannover.

The first holiday charters to Faro from my home airport, Groningen/Eelde, started in 1990. Flights where operated by Air Sul, a short lived charter airline with a fleet of colourfull 737-200's. Here CS-TMB:

The successor of the 727 in the TAP fleet was the Boeing 737-200. For many years they could be seen everywhere around Europe. Here CS-TEQ reversing on Amsterdams runway 06:

The 1993 charter season at Groningen/Eelde saw Air Columbus on the weekly GRQ-FAO service. Normaly the flights where done with the 737-300, but on two occasions a 727-200 visited us. These visits where very rare as besides the two Air Columbus visits Air Holland was the only other airline ever to operate a 727 into Groningen. However, two executive 727's did visit Groningen in 1997 and 2000. On the photo CS-TKA short final for runway 24 in august 1993.

To promote the Algarve TAP painted 737-300 CS-TIC in a very nice special colour. The weather was -again- not on my side when I saw it take off at Amsterdam in february 1998:

That's it for today, I hope you like these older shots. Brings back a lot of memories!

Peter

A Christmas day in Copenhagen

Last week, Sterling had some last minute offers on the route Amsterdam-Copenhagen. As me and my partner both like Danmark (and the rest of Scandinavia) very much we decided to do a very short daytrip on boxing day.

Sterling took over Maersk Air last year and now acts as a low-cost airline. At Amsterdam a new "pier" for low-cost flights has been built. The H-gates cover the departures to non-Schengen countries like the UK, the M-gates (in the same building) are for the Schengen departures. The new pier is at a remote corner of the airport, far behind the G-pier wich handels long-range traffic. Passangers for the H-pier are allowed in the shopping/eating/drinking area there but M-gate passangers have their own lounge, separated from the rest of the airport. And we didn't know that... We arrived early in order to see the nice Christmas atmosphere after security and maybe do some shopping. But... after getting trough security a small lounge was waiting for us, fenced of from the rest of the airport. We could get a glimps of all the shops and restaurants, but for us it was just a small "duty free" shop and an even smaller kiosk where we could get coffee and sanwiches for absolute ridiculous prices!

From the lounge you had no view whatsoever at the platforms so after sitting a while here we got bored and walked to our gate. A warning sign already told us that there were "limited facilities" at the gate and that it would be about a 15 minute walk. Even further away from anything at the airport... Indeed, the gates had no facilities. Per gate there where eight (!!) seats for waiting passangers. Also, anything like a Christmas atmosphere was far away... It looked like a London tube station!

When boarding started we went down the stairs where we were driven together in a square white room without seating facilities. Here we had to wait untill the aircraft was ready for boarding. Luckily there was a snack machine, but with limited choice:

The passengers on our flight also had bad luck with the drinks:

Bording the aircraft (B737-700 OY-MRJ) went smooth and soon we were on our way to CPH. The aircraft was far from full, maybe some 35-40%. The crew was nice and came along to sell food and drinks. Sterling also has a nice in-flight magazine. There was not much to see during the flight as almost entire Europe was covered in clouds.

After one hour we landed at Copenhagen-Kastrup Airport. The cabin crew was not quite awake, probably had a long Christmasday, and forgot some announcements like "we will be landing shortly, please fasten your seatbelts". They realized this very short before landing and over the P/A we heared "Please fasten your seatbelts imidiatly, we will be landing in a few seconds!".
Between the runways, in the middle of the field was a Christmas tree, how nice!

After getting of the aircraft I rushed to the nearest window to get a shot of an aircraft I missed in Ljubljana last month. An Ukrainian registered 737 operating for Adria. Oh, by the way, I already turned my camera to ISO400 as the weather was very dark.

The train took us from the airport to the center of Copenhagen in 15 minutes. Unfortunatly there was no snow but the city looked nice with all the christmas decorations. Most shops were closed but we enjoyed some hours walking trough the city.

Back at the airport for the return flight we passed check in and security quite fast in spite of the long queues. The staff was working very efficient and within a few minutes we were -at last- able to do some shopping. In CPH our flight was not handled at some remote bunker but at the "real" terminal. I like CPH very much, lots of shops, restaurants and a lot of large windows from where you have a good view of the aircraft. As it was getting dark already photography was very limited. But I tried some shots. I liked this one, showing three different SAS liveries:

A few minutes later the "retrojet" of SAS was pushed back and a photo could be made:

Here an "action" shot of a MD-87 being made ready for departure. I like the light on this one.

This A340 could do with some cleaning. Looking very dirty!

The last photo I made was this Flyjet 757, taxiing out for a flight to Goa, India. After that, the light was out and we did some more "windowshopping" before boarding again.

The return flight was done with a 737-500, OY-APK and lasted just over an hour. Before the doors were closed there was some confusion on the number of passengers on board. Whilst seated, we all had to show our boarding pass again to solve this. This procedure was only announced in Danish but we both speak a bit Danish so for us this was no problem.

In flight service was ok again and at AMS we landed on the "Polderbaan" (18R) resulting in a very long taxi-time. We arrived again at the "low cost" terminal and had to walk for another 15 minutes before reaching the "real" terminal.

Peter

Season Greetings

New interface :-(

Just type a new entry, using the very slow new interface. Several times the system hung for some minutes whilst uploading photo's. I almost finished my long entry with a lot of text and photo's as the new interdace caused my computer to hang and crash, so the entry is completly lost :-(

Maybe I will  try to type it again (if I can remember al my text and can find back the photo's on the server) tomorrow :-(

Hmpf,
Peter

Nothing special..

Visited Amsterdam again last Sunday, 10th of december. Probably the last sunny weekend day of this year! Nothing special was seen, so I leave you with a few shots of regular traffic:  

Bye,
Peter

Worth a detour

December 6th, a lot of rain and wind passing over The Netherlands. During the day I found out that a very special visitor was present at the G.A. ramp of Amsterdam/Schiphol. As I was in the neigborhoud (well, quite) I decided to take a detour on my way back north.

The special visitor was a Falcon 50 of the Iranian Air Force/Government. Quite unusual as in their home country you probably end up with lots of years in prison when photographing them (or maybe even looking at them!). So, worth a detour!

It was not parked at the best spot and also the stormy weather wasn't co-operating for a good shot but I got it!

But besides this nice one there were some other surprises on the ramp during my visit of only 10 minutes! What about this nice Yakovlev 40 from Poland:

From Israel came this Bombardier BD100 Challenger 300, one of the smallest members in the Arkia fleet:

Last one taken during this short visit is the Eagle Aviation Boeing Business Jet II N737M. Missed it twice (!) at Groningen/Eelde, but got it now! Next time in a bit brighter weather please!

That's it, back to work now!

Peter

Something different at Amsterdam

A day off today! The weatherforecast was good so I went to Amsterdam/Schiphol. At the general aviation ramp a nice surprise was waiting for me:

There seem to be some problems with the delivery of this 737 for Aeroflot-Nord. It is parked at the east-ramp for about a week now. The first two Aeroflot-Nord 737's visited Groningen/Eelde on a testflight and as far as I know this one -OM-SED- still has to make a test/acceptance flight.

I went on to the -soon to be closed- spotting location along runway 24/06. Most buldings along this road have been demolished. Today they were working on the destruction of a church... Traffic was slow, as most interesting aircraft took of on 18L (and ATIS keeps telling runway 24 is main take off runway!). After an hour or so I went to the "Polderbaan" (18R/36L) as this was the main landing runway according to the ATIS. Well, most traffic landed on 18C ...

Also, the light was getting bad on this runway, as you can see on this shot of a Flybe DHC-8-400. Flybe is new to AMS since a couple of weeks.

I went back to 06/24 as some heavys were due to depart. I wanted to get some different shots in stead of always the same. So I positioned myself a bit further away from the runway and got another view of departing traffic.

PZ-TCM of Surinam Airways taking of bound for Paramaribo. I like the low sun in the winter!

This little SAAB 2000 of FlyLAL/Lithuanian Airlines did a nice turn just after departure, with some cropping it turned out a nice shot:

A rather new 747-400F of Nippon Cargo Airlines:

The last one in this blog is a Northwest A330-200. All scheduled services to AMS are now operated by A330s, the DC-10 is history, altough they keep visiting occasionaly on military charters.

hope you like these shots from a different angle as usual at AMS!

Oh, and I owe you a tripreport for Ljubljana where I went last week...

Peter

A short stop in Brussels

Sometimes it's about being at the right place at the right time... On our way to "Brussels South Airport Charleroi" for our flight to Ljubljana, we made a short stop at Brussels International Airport. At that moment, a big Africa-summit was going on in the city and this caused some interesting aircraft to be at the airport.

When we took the exit from the motorway I saw some nice and colourfull tails on the tarmac at the General Aviation area. The African leaders took some nice and even vintage aircraft to Brussels! Amongst them two Boeing 727's and a 707! Unfortunatly the 707 was in a very bad position for photo's. However, some of the others where in an excellent position! Lets have a look at some highlights:

The government of Togo chartered this white 727-100.

The Cameroon deligation used this very nice Fokker F-28 to go to Brussels.

From Uganda came this Gulfstream IV.

An unknown country leased this Swiss Boeing Business Jet from Privatair.

Rarely seen in Europe is this Ethiopian 737-700.

Also vintage is this BAC 1-11-401AK from Rumania. I don't know if it was also here for the summit, but it was very welcome!

For me this was the star visitor, a Boeing 727-200 from Burkina Faso!

After a coffee in the restaurant we left Brussels again to catch our flight to Slovenia, a report wil follow.

Peter