Sunday, May 24, 2009

Airport

Today I was bored, and decided to go to the airport to watch some planes land and take off. It was quite late by the time I left but I went anyway. Originally I was going to go around near the control tower, but decided to be extravagant and actually pay for parking and go into the terminal. As todays wind was a northerly all planes were landing and taking off on the north south runway. This meant that there is only one place to go, the seats at the very end of the Virgin Blue terminal.

From here you get a front row seat to see all the comings and goings. As this was the only runway in use there were a lot of aircraft lining up to take off. When I first got there, there were at least 7 aircraft banked up (that is a lot for Melbourne) as well as a number of aircraft landing. I only stayed there for about half an hour, but that was enough today, plus it was starting to get dark. Not sure how many aircraft I saw, but I saw aircraft from all 4 main domestic carriers as well as 1 Rex Departure, plus a Thai 777 and Singapore Airlines 747. I slowly walked back through the terminal and to the car park. All up I was parked for just under an hour which cost $12, expensive anywhere else. I expecting a higher charge.

Anyway here are a few shots.


An Embraer E-190 awaiting departure.
Believe it or not, these aircraft are built
in Brazil.

Some of the line up.

From L to R
: Thai 777, QANTAS 737-800, Virgin Blue E-190 and Jetstar A321


The extension to the international terminal
is coming along nicely. International traffic
is growing again after a long period of
decline, so the new gates will be needed.


Up up and away, Virgin Blue E190 off into the
cloudy yonder.

2 comments:

Victor said...

I am old enough that when I was a child my parents would occasionally take me out to 'Mascot Aerodrome' - now Sydney Airport (the Qantas Domestic terminal, in fact).

We would stand by the waist high cyclone fencing adjacent to the tarmac and watch the propellor planes arriving and departing and the passengers boarding and disembarking.

The noise and the smell of aviation fuel seemed overwhelming but it was so exciting at the time.

Ben said...

Not to mention the fantastic noise of those old engines...

Thanks for the comment Victor.