To mark the start of international scheduled services this week by ANA’s Boeing 787, I thought I’d mention a few other places you’ll be seeing the type this year. We’ll see a lot more Boeing 787 Dreamliners in our skies this year as more are delivered to airlines such as Air India, Japan Airlines and China Southern, so it’s time to start getting them in your logbooks!

Tokyo Haneda & Narita
With both ANA and JAL operating the Dreamliner this year, one of the best places to catch the type is at their Tokyo Narita and Haneda bases. This seems likely to be the place to catch the biggest concentration of Dreamliners outside of Seattle or Charleston this year.

Frankfurt International
For Europe, Frankfurt is the first place to see 787 operations with ANA from Tokyo. This was the type’s first international destination, and will be flying in every day.

Seattle
OK, so there are a few Seattle airports to see Deamliners. Most notably, Boeing’s Everett facility is the place where they’re put together. So you’ll see them quite regularly on flight test and out on the flight line. This includes the demonstrators, which is quite cool. However, ANA have also announced 787 flights to Seattle-Tacoma Airport from Tokyo, starting soon.

Boston
The US East Coast gets its first Dreamliner service from Japan Airlines in April, with non-stop service to Tokyo Narita.

Singapore
From September, Japan Airlines’ flights from Tokyo Narita will switch to 787s, increasing to 14x weekly by the end of October.

Melbourne
From October, Air India is expected to begin sending its 787s to Melbourne from its Indian bases. This will likely mark the first scheduled Dreamliner services to Australia.

Osaka Itami
Again, ANA sends its 787s to Itami. Maybe we’ll see more routes out of Osaka’s Kansai airport in the future, but for now the domestic one is the place to be.

New Delhi
Japan Airlines will start daily 787 flights to Delhi from Tokyo Narita later this year. However, if Air India receive their 787s on time, the airport is likely to get even more of the type in residence.

Moscow Domodedovo
Japan Airlines will send their Dreamliners to Moscow DME this year, replacing their 777 equipment. This sees the second known destination in Europe for the type.

Guangzhou
Despite heavy delays, China Southern are expected to take delivery of their first 787 before the Autumn. Therefore their home base of Guangzhou will become a hub for the type very soon.

There are of course more airports that the 787 flies to, such as domestic destinations within Japan. And as new frames arrive for Air India and China Southern, new routes will be announced. If you hear of any, let me know.

Boeing have announced that their 787 is to go on a world tour that lasts 6 months and takes in many different countries.

The purpose of the tour is to raise public awareness, and in particular to demonstrate the aircraft to potential customers and those airlines that are awaiting their first deliveries of the type.

The tour will involve the third production aircraft ZA003 (N787BX) in a special livery, and with a lavish interior designed to show off the capabilities of the aircraft from a passenger experience.

The tour will begin on 4th December when the aircraft reaches Beijing . It will go on to visit Guangzhou and Haikou. Then, between 11-16 December, it will visit African destinations including Addis Ababa and Nairobi.

Between 16-19 December, the aircraft will visit the Middle East and demonstrate to Qatar Airways in Doha.

Further stops will be announced. Keep an eye on Randy’s Journal, who I credit for the info on this page. With any luck we’ll see the aircraft at a number of European airports, and more of the US and Canada. For official news, check out the Boeing website for the tour http://www.newairplane.com/787/dreamtour/

I recently came across this very useful list of vintage aircraft, wrecks and relics that can be found across China. The list is quite comprehensive and includes not just aircraft in museums, but gate guards, aircraft in technical schools and in displayed in many other locations.

If you’re travelling to China and would love to hunt out one of the many Tridents or Russian types hidden around the country, this list is invaluable to you.

http://www.scramble.nl/mil/7/china/vintage_wrecks_relics_aircraft.htm

Although not strictly an airport spotting guide, I hope this post will inspire you to go visit the last Hawker Siddeley Trident aircraft out there.

Many of them are at airports, so that should make things easier to combine with a spotting trip. However, others are in museums – particularly in the UK and China.

The HS.121 Trident was a short-to-medium range airliner built at Hatfield in the UK in the 1960s and 70s. It flew mainly with British European Airways/British Airways and CAAC, although a number of other operators flew them in smaller numbers. The last flights of the type in the UK were in 1986, although some carried on flying in China till around 1990.

Today a few are preserved, and the Save The Trident group are working on the preservation of the last Trident 1C example, which is currently a fire trainer at Durham Tees Valley airport in Teesside, and will be moved to the North East Aircraft Museum at Sunderland in the near future. So that’s the first one – you can see it, and its stablemate Trident 3B G-AWZS, at Durham Tees Valley Airport.

Down at Manchester Airport, there’s the preserved Trident 3B G-AWZK at the Aviation Viewing Park. There’s also a Trident 2E section on the airport site, visible from the multi-storey car park, in use by the fire crews. A Trident 3B nose section is on display in the Museum of Science and Industry in central Manchester, also.

Down at Duxford’s Imperial War Museum, a complete Trident 2E G-AVFB is preserved and on display.

At the de Havilland Museum just north of London, a section of Trident 2E G-AVFH. And at the FAST Museum at Farnborough, the preserved and working cockpit of Trident 3B G-AWZI is on display.

The Science Museum’s store at Wroughton, Wiltshire, has another complete Trident 3B – G-AWZM, although this is rarely open to the public sadly.

Over in Northern Ireland, the fire crew at Belfast International Airport use Trident 2E G-AVFE. It can be found in the north west corner of the airfield, visible from aircraft.

At Carlisle, 1C cockpit G-ARPP is in the Solway Aviation Museum, and just up the road at the Dumfries & Galloway Aviation Museum, most of Trident 3B G-AWZJ is open to the public.

Finally for the UK, the cockpit of 1C G-ARPH is at the National Museum of Flight at East Fortune, near Edinburgh.

Outside the UK, over in China you can find around 12 Tridents remaining. The easiest to visit are the three at the Datan Shan Museum near Beijing.

Elsewhere, there are Tridents at Anshan Air Base, Tianjin, Nan Yuan (near Beijing), Sichuan Guanghan, Zhuhai City, and Guangzhoi (with three examples).

Finally, one more Trident is existent – 2E 5B-DAB in old Cyprus Airways colours. However, it is marooned at the old Nicosia Airport, which is out of bounds inside the UN exclusion zone. Best bet is to look for it when flying into Ercan airport.

The Save The Trident team have put together an excellent e-booklet listing the history of the Trident and all of the locations of the remaining examples, with handy maps and pictures. Buying a copy of the booklet puts money into the fund to preserve G-ARPO, so it’s worth it! Follow this link to get a copy: http://www.savethetrident.org/tridents-2010-booklet/

Shanghai’s Hongqiao airport opened its new official spectator facility on 16 March 2010 on top of the new Terminal 2 building. Interestingly, this is the first official spotting location to be opened at any Chinese airport, and many hope this will pave the way for other airports to have such facilities incorporated – especially when new terminals and upgrades are built.

Terminal 2 is home to all domestic flights at the airport (apart from Spring Airlines), with international flights remaining at the older Terminal 1.

The new open-air spotting facility is on the 4th floor of the building with great views over the apron and runway beyond. It is 60 metres long and has a security check on entry.

To reach the facility, escalators from the check-in area will whisk you up in no time.

If you have any photos from this new facility, or experience from using it, please comment below.

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/