Planespotting at London City Airport

Today was a day of aviation firsts for me: first time at London City Airport and first time flying the Embraer E-190...and I give excellent marks to both!

London City airport is, obviously quite different from the other airports serving the London area, like an exclusive boutique compared to a mainstream retailer.

But I was also positively surprised as an aviation enthusiast an planespotter, since it is possible to enjoy great views of the runway from the waiting area of the terminal, and you can see some aircraft types that you seldom see at other London airports, such as the Avro RJ85s and several models of Embraer's E-jets.

Here are some pictures that I took while waiting to board my flight...I took some more interesting pictures with my camera (including one of the unique British Airways transatlantic business-only Airbus A318 and I expect to post them to my Instagram account in the near future).

There were actually three Swiss jumbolinos in a line, waiting to take-off...but only tow fit into the frame!

A visual summary of the Farnborough air show

An air show like Farnborough is always a gold mine for planespotters, up to the point that I thought it was worth doing a visual post only, in addition to the one where I explained my experience at this year's air show. So here there are, enjoy!

Airbus demo'ed the capabilities of its A380: really quiet and agile for a plane of its size!

The military jets were too fast and small for me to capture well in camera, but here is one of the figther jets that participated in the flying display: the polyvalent and agile Saab Gripen

And what avgeek is not stunned by the sheer beauty of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner?

Qatar Airways brought its first Dreamliner to the Farnborough air show

Is it just me finding the Dreamliner's nose really cute?

Here is another airliner I also find really cool: the Sukhoi Superjet, seen here in Aeroflot livery

A tribute to Spanair, in pictures...

I travel often through Spanish airports, where Spanair aircraft were a common sight. They came in different sizes and colours, the result of a convulse corporate history. Spanair, we will miss you! 

Here is my photo-tribute:

The old livery, here a Spanair Airbus at Madrid-Barajas

And the new livery...this one spotted at BCN

 Spanair was a proud Star Alliance partner

A Boeing 717, we'll see some more of these in the European skies soon!

 Spanair was positioning itself as "the Barcelona airline": here a map of its network in a commercial advert

A Spanair MD-83 with the city of Barcelona in the background

Spanair EC-GVO taxiing at BCN

Spanair's fleet was initially made of MD-83s, some of these have remained with the carrier until the end

The old and new liveries side by side at BCN

Despite management efforts, the outlook had always been really foggy for Spanair...

Unusual planespotting opportunities

I am by no means an expert planespotter, but when I come across some interesting sights at Europe's airports, I like to share them here. On this occasion the pictures are of two airlines that operate very limited schedules to European airports, so it is not too easy to spot them!


An Uzbekistan Airways A310 taxiing at Madrid-Barajas (MAD) before taking off for Tashkent


An Aeromexico Boeing 767 at Barcelona-El Prat (BCN)

KLM retro and SkyTeam liveries

Here are some interesting KLM liveries that I have seen on a recent trip to Schiphol:


KLM retro livery, spotted @AMS . This Boeing 737 was painted this way in order to celebrate the Dutch airline's 90th birthday, but I am not sure to what historical period does this livery correspond. Comments and suggestions welcome!




A KLM Boeing 737 in SkyTeam livery, alliance-themed liveries are becoming more and more common!

Planespotting at Barcelona airport (BCN)

Here are some pics taken while waiting to board my flight at BCN. They were taken from T2 terminal (the old and now almost empty terminal), that has a nice view of one of the runways and of the brand-new T1 terminal, although the distance is considerable, as you can see from the size of the planes in the image.


Norwegian Boeing 737




Luxair's De Havilland DHC-8 400 just arrived from Luxemburg


A Vueling A320 heading for Terminal 1, Vueling is now the airline that carries more passengers at BCN


An AirBaltic Boeing 737 from Riga


Lufthansa A320 from Munich


Airbus 320 from Czech airline CSA arriving from Prague-Ruzyne

From The Times

Quite shocking, to be honest...

British plane-spotters face jail in India

Planespotting at Heathrow T-5

I recently found myself for the very first time at Heathrow's new Terminal 5. The views were very good, as the new modern buildings provide a considerably better view than any than any the old terminals, however, the terminal is totally monopolized by BA, so there was no much variety in the type of planes to be spotted. I have to admit, that the venerable 747 remains a very impressive aircraft though!