There may be hope, as celebrity pilot and Marketing Director for the airline – Bruce Dickinson (of Iron Maiden fame) – has vowed to save it in some form, and secure the jobs and operating style of the airline.

But in the meantime, it has left Iceland Express in the lurch as they used Boeing 737s of Astraeus on a number of routes. Therefore, they have drafted in the help of Holidays Czech Airlines and their Airbus A320s, which will be operating on routes out of Keflavik to places such as Copenhagen, London Gatwick, Alicante, Oslo, New York, Berlin and Warsaw.

I don’t yet know whether this is an interim measure, or if the deal will last indefinitely, but it at least gives those of you at those airports something interesting to look out for!

Korean Air‘s brand new Airbus A380 has been fully painted and will be delivered soon, with services beginning on 17th June 2011.

It will be based at Seoul Incheon, and fly trunk routes to Bangkok, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, New York JFK and Tokyo Narita.

I think you’ll agree it looks splendid in the smart blue colour scheme of Korean Air.

Photo (c) Okke Behm

Getting there from Manhattan
The New Jersey Transit company have coaches departing the Port Authority Bus Terminal regularly heading to Patterson, which has to go past Teterboro on Route 46. Weekdays can see frequencies upto every 20 minutes, whereas Sundays can be down to 1 per hour. The fare is $4.25 each way, and leaving Manhattan you must purchase tickets prior to boarding, so a visit to the ticket office is a must. Coach number is the 151 or 161 (one only operates every now and again in peak periods with a slightly different routing) and they depart from stop 302…confirm that with ticket man…its around 302 at least! Coach takes 20-30 minutes depending on the traffic. Just keep an eye out for the airport. If you sit on the left you’ll see Newark inbounds (assuming theyre landing over Teterboro) as well as some TEB departures, to make you aware of how far you have to go. You pass through alot of residential areas before hitting route 46. You’ll know you are close when you are at traffic lights with a used car garage on your left, and as you turn onto the main road you’ll have a Wendys/Burger King on your right. Teterboro airport will come into view very quickly once on route 46 so get the stop button pressed. The first stop is outside the strawberrys building, though if you miss that the next is Hollister Road, which on the other side of the 46 takes you down past the hangars.

Spotting
Assuming you make the first stop, I merge myself into the strawberrys car park to read off anything immediately departing. I then make the short walk past the ‘drive thru’ bank, to Teterboro college. This is great for reading off some stuff parked up and for just spotting the movements. By the door of the college theres a bench I perch myself on, but only when the college is closed, and I have noticed this is a car park used by spotters with wheels. Never had a problem spotting here out in the open, but just avoid the main sidewalk as on my first visit years ago I was reported very quickly by a passing car and police were quick to respond. No problems, and was just advised to stay out of view, but time consuming when time is precious. I then walk down to Hollister Road, cross route 46 and head down the hangar road where Signature etc are located. You can do two things here – to avoid hassle, proceed straight to the police station at first set of light, explain you are taking tail numbers etc. Normally a photocopy of passport is taken, a few questions asked, and thats about it. You can spot freely from public areas without the harassment of the security stalls for each hangar phoning you in and police attending to check you out. Or, like me once again when time is precious, before I reach the hangars, the binoculars and notepad go back in the bag. I’ve had no problems walking down here casually looking accross road every now and then and pretending to text on phone, when I’m just typing registrations into the Blackberry instead. I wouldnt advise hanging around here if you havent reported into police station though.

You can then walk all the way down until you ahave done all the hangars, then there are some areas you can be discreet to look over to the NetJets facility between the trees. Be careful as police/secuirty cars are constantly driving up and down. Then, you can follow the road right round and along to the Flight Options/NetJets hangar where you can generally see the more exotic, foreign regs. There’s new roadworks here as the runway has been lengthened (I think) and the road offset, but between construction vehicles you can still view in and pick off some regs, but not all. The walk around to here takes a good hour, and the same or less on way back.

Driving
There are various benefits as you can get into some car parks along main access road that you can’t on foot. At the same time it’s not advised to stay anywhere for too long that might attract attention. I wouldn’t advise being on foot if its more than just the one of you, as that would obviously cause suspicion, unless you split up I suppose. When awaiting coach back to city, they are on the airport side of the road immediately opposite where you got off. If you board it up near Straberrys, theres a wall you can sit on where the airport sign is, and this is great for general views as well as perhaps the cheeky photo through the fence.

They’re currently based at New York JFK Terminal 4, and their single aircraft is being prepared for its new life with this carrier. It is a Boeing 747-200B aircraft, formerly flown by Pakistan International Airlines (and still wearing their partial livery judging by the video).

Their plan is to serve cities in Belarus, Latvia, Russia and Ukraine with their 3-class service, plus cargo. Airports in their website’s schedule include: New York JFK, St. Petersburg, Riga, Vilnius, Moscow, Tallinn, Minsk and Kiev.

To introduce their company and aircraft, Baltia Airlines has put together this video:

watch?v=bnduu6W_Zqk

The airline has announced the routes the aircraft will operate as:
Dubai (1 February 2010)
Johannesburg (early 2010)
New York JFK (23 November 2009)
Tokyo Narita (spring 2010)

All will operate from Paris CDG airport. Interestingly, the route to Dubai will start 15 days before Emirates start using A380s on their Dubai – Paris route.

The aircraft will visit Paris Orly on 11 November to test the airport as a diversion field from CDG.

Take a look at the blog post here for an interesting picture of what you can see.
http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/7/23/132132/122/travel/Watch+For+Fly+Balls+And+Landing+Planes+At+NY%27s+Citi+Field

The Holiday Inn and Ramada Plaza hotels are the best options.

The Holiday Inn has distant, but good, views – particuarly for those with telescope poles. Having a SBS is also definitely useful here! Rooms that don’t face JFK have distant views of La Guardia airport, which is also useful if you have a SBS.

From the Ramada, rooms have views of aircraft when landing on runway 13L, but there’s also a grassy bank area a short walk from the hotel with much better views.

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.

Currently a 5x weekly service is operating from New York JFK (sometimes via Halifax) to Liege in Belgium. This operates Tuesday-Saturday mornings.

Rumours are that more links with TNT will be flown by ABX Air in the near future. This is a great chance to see some rarer aircraft to our skies and airports.

The site is: www.nycaviation.com