After months of uncertainty, Coventry Airport has finally found a new owner after The Patriot Aviation group stepped in to take on the airport in the West Midlands.
The group have plans to turn Coventry into a “commercial, regional hub with full air traffic service.”
Since closing, the airport has been in occasional use as an unlicensed field, with light aircraft and the resident Classic Flight aircraft still operating.
The hope is that Patriot, run by Sir Peter Rigby, will create a vibrant hub for general aviation, leisure, business and freight, “with passenger flights amongst possible future plans.”
This is great news for the airport, and the region’s spotters. Hopefully Coventry will only grow from now on, and see an increase in movements and fortunes.
If any of you lucky people are off to South Africa this summer for the World Cup, perhaps you could benefit from a bit of information on spotting at one of the main airports in the country.
Johannesburg will handle the vast majority of international flights, given it is already set up and well-served by carriers from around the world. Cape Town will also handle a lot of flights.
Johannesburg OR Tambo International Airport has two parallel runways. The airport also has two terminals – A (International) and B (Domestic).
Each terminal has its own viewing gallery, and each has views of both runways. The International terminal’s gallery is the best, as it also has views of the cargo terminal, and you can still see the domestic terminal and all movements from there. Sadly both viewing areas are behind glass, so it can limit photography potential.
German spotters listen up – your new Lufthansa Airbus A380 will be performing a pilot training schedule at various airports in May and June. Be the first to see the beast in action for endless landing, taxying and takeoff shots.
There are also a few Austrian and Swiss airports thrown into the schedule, so you guys watch out too!
The schedule looks like this:
Monday, 31 May
Full-day flight training at Karlsruhe Airport.
Tuesday, 1 June
Full-day flight training at Leipzig Airport.
Wednesday, 2 June
Line training on the Frankfurt – Stuttgart – Zürich – Vienna – Dresden – Linz – Munich – Frankfurt routes.
Thursday, 3 June
Line training on the Frankfurt – Berlin-Tegel – Hanover – Hamburg – Bremen – Dusseldorf – Cologne/Bonn – Frankfurt routes.
Credit to EmpireStateFX.com for posting the news
Spotters visiting the airports in Southern California (SoCal to the locals) now have a new web resource to help in their planning, which has been set up by Mark Ollier.
Mark moved to the area and has been inundated with requests for information from fellow enthusiasts, so has decided to set up this site to cover all of the information you’ll need when spotting at the various airports. To start with, he has covered Burbank,Van Nuys,Los Angeles and Long Beach but states “I will add more airports over the coming weeks.”
He adds: “On the site you will find spotting locations and daily movements for those airports. I will be adding SBS reports and a gallery. I have a forum which you need to sign up to access but on here I will keep everone updated with airport news, airline schedules, new build C-17′s and Gulfstream’s out of Long Beach, and the latest information on the storage areas of Mojave and Victorville.”
This site has fantastic potential as a lot of decent airports are situated close together and regularly make it onto the travel itineraries of spotters visiting the area.
The site can be found at http://www.socalspotters.net/
