I think a lot of spotters like to know which aircraft are languishing away at different storage airports, as it’s always good to make a trip to catch up on a few of these airframes before the inevitable scrapping takes place. I’m the same, and I’m always looking for up-to-date resources.

So, what’s the point in this? Well I’ve started keeping track of the aircraft stored at various different airports on this site.

For now, I’m particularly paying attention to UK and lesser-known storage airports as they get little coverage compared to those in Arizona and California.

You can find the lists under the Storage Lists tab at the top of the page. So far I’ve included:

Coventry, UK
Kemble, UK
Moscow Domodedovo, Russia
Summerside, Canada

Can you help me keep this up-to-date? Or can you add information for an airport that’s not covered? Please get in touch or comment if so.

This week I had the privilege of speaking to Pieter Johnson for his ‘Across the Pond’ segment on the popular Airplane Geeks Podcast, on episode 165.

Pieter spoke to me about spotting in Europe, in particular the best places, and pitfalls, and my favourite airports. He also mentioned the new book I have coming out soon – Airport Spotting Guides Europe 2012. This is a complete re-work of 2008′s edition, so is perfect for your spotting travels in Europe! If you listen to the podcast, you can enter a competition to win a copy of the new book (before 1st October)!

We’ll hopefully be following this up with segments about spotting in the USA, and the Far East/Australasia over the next month or so.

Thanks Pieter for this. You can listen to the podcast here: http://www.airplanegeeks.com/2011/09/20/episode-165-sennheiser-knows-noise/ 

Are any of you on Facebook? Airport Spotting Blog runs a group on there and we’d love to have you join and keep up with regular updates on the site and other interesting things.

We’ll try to use our Facebook group to build a community of spotters and airport fans around the world, so it’ll be fantastic if you could join up!

You can do so by clicking on this link: Airport Spotting on Facebook

Various enthusiasts sites exist for some of the airports in Scotland which can help in planning a trip to any of them, or in simply finding out what’s been happening up there. We have collated this information for some of the airports:

Glasgow Airport
EGPF.co.uk
Enthusiasts site for Glasgow Airport, with timetables, SBS list, spotting locations and charts, photos, live arrivals & departures, and logs of recent movements.

Prestwick Airport
Prestwick Airport Movements Site
Similar to the Glasgow enthusiasts site, with movements, photos, spotting information, airfield charts and live flight information.

Edinburgh Airport
EGPH.co.uk
A similar site for Edinburgh Airport enthusiasts. Lists frequencies, live flight arrivals & departures, airline information, photos and SBS information.

egphforum.co.uk
A forum for discussing Edinburgh Airport and its operations.

The brand new, modern airport facility at Yangyang in South Korea cost $400m to build. Yet it now has no operators, with the last commercial flight having left in November 2008.

A really interesting video: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8055957.stm

As a way to combine trips to (sometimes) far-flung places, with like-minded enthusiasts for company, aviation tour companies offer a great outlet for our hobby.

Some of the better known companies operating in the UK are:
Aeroprints
Ian Allan Tours
The Aviation Society

The immediate benefits of taking one of these tours, first and foremost, include the potential quality of the aircraft you’ll see. Whilst everyone’s logbooks contain different aircraft, the beauty of aviation tours is that you can pick somewhere that will be beneficial to you.

Another big benefit is that most organisations pre-arrange access to areas that would otherwise be restricted to the enthusiast, such as airside ramp tours at airports, access to private collections and museums, or manufacturers. Having all of this takes a massive headache out of organising trips on your own, and is undoubtedly more beneficial to your logbook and photograph collections.

The biggest arguments many have for not using tours tends to be cost – tours are usually expensive, and the thrifty can usually find cheaper ways to travel by themselves. Although many of the extras wouldn’t be included.

Touching further on this, others cite not wishing to travel with a bunch of unknown people, when they can just as easily travel alone, or with their friends.

Whatever your stance on the matter, the tour companies are already offering more and more elaborate and tempting tours for 2010. Here are some tasters:

Aeroprints have a Round-the-World trip at £2595, and a Japan-Korea trip at £1445 planned.

Ian Allan also have a Round-the-World trip planned at £2839 with different destinations.

The Aviation Society has not announced any 2010 trips yet, but has three main 2009 trips, to Dubai Air Show, Paris Air Show, and China.

What are your thoughts on aviation tours? Have you taken them? What were your experiences?

I’ve been experimenting a bit with the layout and look of Airport Spotting Blog today. Please bear with me as I make these changes, and possibly some extra ones, over the next few days.

Hopefully nothing will go wrong with the content, and the comment system still works so let me know what you think of the new look!