Airport Spotting Blog

Mark Curran recently reported on his trip to Shanghai in which he searched out some of the aviation-related points of interest away from from city’s main airports, as well as some general comments on spotting there. Read below:

SHANGHAI AVIATION ENTHUSIAST CENTRE
To access SAEC by public transport, take Shanghai Metro line 1 to Jin Jiang Park station. Leave the station to the left, and walk past the variety of alive/dead mobile phones, computer parts and domestic animals available for sale on Humin Road. After crossing a small bus station you will come to a subway/underpass. The first entrance is for motorbikes, enter at your own risk; the second is pedestrian access.

Cross under the road. On the other side you exit next to a fair ground - continue walking south on XXXX (this will involve leaving the subway and doing a 270 degree right turn). Whilst there is a footpath it is a bit perilous due to the adjacent cycle/bicycle lane, variously also used by cars and buses, and not always in the correct correction.
Indeed the desire to shout “mentalist!” in an Alan Partridge voice betroth me several times! After about 400 yards the SAEC is on your right, there is wide gate with a large booth on the left. Pay your 8RMB (about 80p) and inspect the DC-8 (including the interior), Volks IL-14 as well as 4 MiG/Chinese copies, one helicopter and a boat.
There was apparently a DHC-2 here but it was not visible.

LONG HUA AIRPORT
The disused airport at Long Hua is now a residential area, with much of the terminal ramp having blocks of flats. The runway is fairly intact but the scene of much building / clearance work so a fair bet it will be built on soon.

Adjacent to the airport is the CAAC College, home of an AN-24, an IL-18 and an AN-2. To get here take Shanghai Metro line 3 to Long Cao station. After exiting use the circular footbridge to access Long Hua Road, follow this to the next junction with Long Hua Road West. After crossing the railway line you reach a roundabout, facing the old airport terminal. Turn left, and keep going. After about 500 yards the end of the runway is visible on your right, and on the left is a bus parking area with may be 10 buses and some huts for bus drivers, cleaners, bicycles etc. Between these the three aircraft can be seen. They are tightly packed, viewed through a double fence, so are not photographable to any standard.

Bus 864 also operates frequently between Long Hua Airport and the City Centre.

Note that the walk from Long Cao to the Airport is not the easiest due to the amount of crap the Chinese festoon their pavements with, such as bicycles and dead things. It is also not the easiest place to cross the road as traffic signals are more for decoration than any real intent - indeed I saw an elderly woman knocked over by a Chinese 4×4.

THE 737-200
I intended to go and find the ex-China Eastern 737-200 that is also in southern Shanghai. The Metro line XXX terminus at Ji Yang Road seemed quite close by. However my Chinese speaking friends couldn’t find this station on the map, and I later established the station was closed.
After looking on Google Maps for the next station (South Ying Lan Road), it all looked a bit favella-ish, so decided to not bother.

SHANGHAI DEVEOPMENTS
Instead I went to the Shanghai Council Museum for planning Projects for the Shanghai Expo 2010 (!). Shanghai is a rapidly expanding city and lacks the infrastructure to cope with the rate of expansion, so
there is a heavy building program focussing on both sustainability and volume, from everything to housing to water supply to subways. And an obsession with building very tall office buildings (the glass floor on the 210th floor of Shanghai Wold Financial Centre is very scary!).

The point of my including this is the museum had models of the plans for both Pu Dong and Hongqiao airports. At Pu Dong the intention is to build a very large ‘H’ shaped pier to the north od the existing two terminals. Hongqiao is slated for massive redevelopment in to an airport with two piers. I think this would include the demolition of the Hong Gang.

A recent report by Paul Moiser from a spotting trip to China gives the following details about the 4-star Ease Hotel in the terminal.

To get to the hotel from where the bus drops you off if coming from Shanghai Hongqiao, walk inside the terminal and take the elevator down to level 1, you will see signs for the Maglev station, walk through to
the maglev station, then take the elevator up to the first floor, you will see their are two hotels joined together via a walkway, being Motel 168 which is a 3 star, and the Ease Hotel which is a 4 star. His room in the Ease Hotel was 8801. It was large, and contained two wide screen TV’s in each corner of the room.

Here’s an official link to the hotel.

The rooms offer superb views of the action. Movements arriving can be read off once they vacate the runway, whilst those taxiing over to T1 taxi right infront of you on the cross taxiway, which seemed to be the main taxiiway.  Aircraft parked on T2 also used the cross taxiiway to taxi out for departure.

Once it goes dark some of the movements using the cross taxiiway can still be read off with a steady hand as its very well lit up. Having an SBS to hand will naturally prove invaluable in the dark.

Visit Paul’s site here http://worldwidephotos.pm.fotopic.net/

Denver is the largest airport in Colorado, and one of the busiest in the USA. It plays host to a large number of movements by Frontier and United Airlines. It also has services from all other main US airlines, and a number of international airlines.

Denver Airport has three terminals - A, B and C

Terminal A hosts Frontier’s regional fleet, operated by Lynx, and is the best terminal for spotting. Inside, walk to the end of the terminal where there are large glass windows. This overlooks the commuter aircraft, and across to the United gates. This is the best spot for covering most movements, although the airport is so big and has so many runways that it is impossible to cover everything.

Terminals B and C also both have large windows at their gates, which offer views of aircraft moving around.

There are few accessible views from around the perimeter due to a lack of public roads.

Anyone know of any other good spots? Please comment.

Sorry for the late warning. Dutch Spotters are hosting another Rotterdam Aviation Fair inside the terminal building on Saturday 18 April.

Parking and entrance is free. Inside you’ll find many booths and tables selling all kinds of books, DVDs, models, slides etc.

You can also take part in ramp tours of Rotterdam Airport (I did one of these a couple of years ago and it proved very fruitful!). There’s also the chance to take a sightseeing flight to Amsterdam.

The event is open from 10am to 4pm. See this link for more information.

Upstairs, Rotterdam has a great viewing gallery overlooking the apron.

It seems talks are underway to sell Heathrow’s British Airways Concorde G-BOAB to Dubai. It would become a tourist attraction on one of the palm-shaped islands, similar to the fate of the QE2 cruise liner.

This link http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article6054915.ece explains the story in more detail.

If this goes ahead, the planned display of G-BOAB in Heathrow’s Terminal 5 would not come to fruition, and there would be no lasting memory of Concorde at Heathrow.

The Concorde aircraft this week celebrates its 40th anniversary.