This report comes from Rob Aldridge on the Singapore Changi Village hotel, near the busy airport.

As its name suggests the hotel is in Changi which is a small town near Changi airport. This is Singapores main airport. The hotel has 7 floors with a swimming pool on the roof. Aircraft fly close to the hotel. They actually advertise the hotels swimming pool as offering great views of aircraft arriving or leaving the airport and they are right. Aircraft noise is however minimal.

Changi has two runways some distance apart from each other. 20 Right is close to the hotel and aircraft registrations can easily be read off with a basic pair of binoculars as the aircraft come into land. When they use 20 Left for landings, normally only at busy times, then a good pair of binoculars or telescope are needed. Obviously an SBS box makes life a lot easier and also allows for spotting to continue when it gets dark which is at about 7pm. As with many Asian airports it gets very busy at night. It is a similar situation when they depart off 2 Left or 2 Right i.e. aircraft using 2 Left can be easily read off. Most of the time I was there the 20 direction runways were in use for landing traffic.

To get an even better view there is a beach area close to the hotel and from the beach great photographs can be taken.

The hotel has rooms that overlook the sea which if you tell them you want to watch the aircraft is what you will get given. However when we arrived at the hotel at 9am in the morning they said that none of these rooms were available and gave us room 751. Which was good of them since check in is supposed to be at 2pm. This is where I struck very lucky because this room not only offers views of the landing aircraft (When they are using 20s) but aircraft departing can also be seen at about 800 feet as they clime out. An SBS box or similar is needed to obtain the registrations as these aircraft are about two miles away and you see a tail on view of the aircraft. Aircraft cannot be seen landing on 02 runways from the hotel. They cannot easily be seen departing on 20 runways from the rooftop pool however most of the aircraft execute a loop and head back over the hotel. Those that don’t are normally those heading south e.g. to Indonesia and Australasia.

From memory other rooms that would give a similar view to 751 are 749 and 750. The higher the floor the better as there are trees that can limit the view. The rooms on the 7th floor are described as Quality rooms and I paid about 80 pounds a night.

A slight drawback to what is a nice hotel is that the fans on the roof do create quite allot of noise. During the day you don’t notice them but at night they can seem quite loud. It is not dissimilar to the noise you get on an aircraft. Nevertheless it didn’t distract from what was a great holiday. My wife and my son didn’t notice the noise and just assumed when I mentioned it that it was the rooms air conditioning which it isn’t.

The hotel has an hourly shuttle to and from the airport. It leaves the hotel on the hour and the airport at twenty to the hour. The alternative is to get a taxi from the airport, which for four of us cost $15. Another alternative if travelling from the city centre is to get the MRT to Tampines and then catch the 29 bus. The bus stops outside the hotel and costs about 75p. The bus station is next to the MRT and buses are frequent.

Outside of the hotel are a number of food outlets. There are also a number of mini markets similar to a local corner shop (alcohol is expensive in Singapore).

Singapore is also a busy Cargo airport and a typical day would see:
Nippon Cargo 747 (It departs at about 6am)
Fed Ex 777, MD11 (Or Dc10)
UPS 757 plus an occasional 767 or MD11
Asiana 747
Cathay 747
Korean 747
China Airlines 747
Transmile 727.
Cargolux 747
Aerologic 777
EVA 747
China Eastern and Shanghai MD11

Sinagpore Changi Village Hotel’s official website is http://www.stayvillage.com/Changi/index.aspx?page=home

JAL (Japan Air Lines) are to retire their MD-81 (DC-9-81) fleet this September after serving the airline since the 1980s.

On 19-20 September the airline will send one of the MD-81 aircraft on a farewell tour of Japan to mark the occasion with the following schedule:

19 September: It will fly from Osaka (KIX) at 8:45 am, arriving at Oki (OKI) at 9:45 am. At Oki passengers will be able to walk around the tarmac to take photos of the aircraft. At 3 pm the airliner will leave Oki for Sapporo (CTS), arriving at 5 pm.

20 September: The aircraft will leave CTS at 7:45 am, arriving at OKI at 9:45 am. Passengers on the special flight will again be able to take photos, plus the aircraft will perform touch-and-go’s on this day. At 4:30 pm the airliner will leave OKI for KIX, arriving at 5:35 pm. Tickets are being sold by JALTours.

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.

If you’re planning on spending any time spotting at Tokyo Narita, you might want to consider the information below on the best spotting hotels and which rooms work.

Holiday Inn
This is fairly expensive, but has some views. Room 1250 is the best, giving you a view of everything on the western runway. If aircraft are landing to the west then you can poll everything that taxis to the end of the runway. If you have a SBS box you get everything landing and departing.

You can also see everything that takes off on the other runway and visa versa if they are landing in the other direction, but aircraft are very high by the time they are visible.

http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/pc/1/en/hotel/narja?rpb=hotel&crUrl=/h/d/pc/1/en/hotelsearchresults

Holiday Inn
Tobu Narita
320-1 Tokko
Chiba
Narita
Chiba
286-0106

The Rest House
A basic, cheap hotel with a few rooms that have very limited views. You can see about 60% of the cargo ramp and if they are taking off to the west then stuff taxying off to the runway on the North only.

You can walk to T1 from here as it’s only 5 minutes away. There are plenty of places to eat in both terminals. T1 is good for Ti and there is a free shuttle to T2 and T2 has two observation decks that allow you to see most of the stuff around T2

http://www.apo-resthouse.com/english/index.html

Rest House Hotel
Narita International Airport
Narita City
Chiba-Pref
Japan
282-0011
yoyaku@apo-resthouse.com

Nikko Winds Hotel
A great spotting hotel at Narita. Room 910 is noted as having the best views of the action on the ground. It also has a restaurant on the top floor with great views of the airport.

http://www.jalhotels.com/domestic/kanto/winds/

560 Tokko
Narita-shi
Chiba 286-0106
Apan

Andy Bowden of Plane Spotting Hotels website reports on what is regarded one of the best hotels for aircraft spotting at Singapore’s Changi Airport. He writes…

I would rate this hotel as probably one of the best all round hotels in the world for aircraft viewing and photography. As an added bonus, from the rooms mentioned below the occasional movement from Seleter Airport can seen in the distance. The hotel is situated in an excellent location, connected to terminal 3 at Singapore airport. The hotel is a short walk from the terminal 3 viewing area. The viewing areas on terminal 1 and 2 are a short 5 minute ride on the airport monorail, the station of which is a 2 minute walk from the hotel. The airport restaurants are expensive, however a wide range of food courts, as well as a supermarket can be found in the terminals. If you decide to order room service to allow you to eat and spot a typical American Style breakfast of ham, eggs and hash browns is around £8, a pizza for dinner is around £11.

For the ideal views you require a room on the 7th, 8th or 9th floorending in *02, *04, *06, *08, *09, *10, *11, *12. These rooms give a fantastic view over the right hand runway in front of terminal 3. The hotel corridor is open plan allowing you to walk out of the room into the corridor to see movements on the busy central runway (SBS and a scanner is helpful for you to monitor movements on the central runway as you do need to leave your room to see this runway). At busy times the right hand runway is used for arrivals only, however in moderate to quiet times a mixed mode operation is in force therefore you do require a means of monitoring the central runway to ensure that you do not miss the movements. Be warned, the above rooms all are reported to have the one large queen size bed, therefore if there are 2 of you be prepared to get cosy (or a roll away bed is available for a costly £30 a night). Photos can be taken from the room although the windows are tinted. A 10 second walk from the room will take you to an opening on the outside corridor where superb outdoor shots can be taken (80-200mm for aircraft on the taxiway, 200-400mm for runway shots). Morning to early afternoons are best with the sun behind you. Examples of the view from the rooms can be seen at http://www.plane-spotting-hotels.com/plane_spotting_singapore_airport.htm.

The aim of the rip was to see as many Singapore 777 as possible prior to them withdrawing the older ones. After two and a half days we came away with all but 8. All of the A380′s were seen within the first day and a half. The new A330′s were harder with the final 1 of the 5 seen at lunchtime of the finalday. All A340′s were also seen, these creep in early (0500ish) and depart mid morning, and are away from base for a couple of days due to the length of the flights to New York and LAX.

Things get a little quiet between 1100-1400 giving you the opportunityto wizz into Singapore on the local train (about £2 each way) and see the sights.

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

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/

One of Japan’s busiest and most modern airports. Osaka is a great stop-off if you’re spotting in Japan, however it has periods of few traffic movements on afternoons.

The actual traffic you get is very similar to that at Tokyo’s airports.

Osaka Kansai has a spotting deck which is four storeys above ground, and situated at the end of Runway 24, which is used most often. The deck opens at 10am and closes at 6pm. It is free to enter, and has both indoor and outdoor areas, along with food & drink facilities and arrivals boards. A bus will take you from the terminal to the Aeroplaza building, which is opposite the viewing deck.The sun is behind you here, so you can take excellent photographs.

If you are travelling through Osaka Kansai, there are opportunities to view aircraft through windows at certain departure gates, although this can be frustrating and limited at times.

Kuala Lumpur’s modern new airport (KLIA) luckily provides very acceptable facilities for spotting aircraft.

In the International Terminal, follow signs for the viewing area, which is upstairs past the food court.

The large room overlooks most of the parking areas, and has views extending to both runways. It is surrounded by glass, but is usually acceptable for photography. There are seats and departures/arrivals boards provided.

You can see across to the pier, but not beyond it, which makes it difficult to see anything parked on the maintenance or cargo ramps. These can, however, be seen if you are in the remote pier departure areas.