A peep on the runways

Trip: Sydney. 2012.

An aircraft flying in… captured from inside the plane as we sat waiting for the plane to taxi out…

Expedia made this trip to Sydney possible.
You can catch them on Facebook, twitter, and even on Youtube.

Airports are places where I always love watching airplanes. I’ve been doing this for years now and it is still as fascinating as it was then… truth is that even when we drive from Delhi to Gurgaon, I slow down whenever we happen to come across a plane landing or taking off around the IGIA (Indira Gandhi International Airport).

There was no reason why I wouldn’t do some plane-spotting on the Delhi-Sydney trip in May 2012. Watching the crafts from within the airport terminal or watching them as you walk down to your specified boarding gate, or when you walk through the bridge to the aircraft… or even as you sit on your window seat inside the plane! Wherever you happen to be, you can surely watch airplanes taxiing or just waiting until further orders!

The best plane-spotting we did was during one of the walks in London that took us to the East London University from where we could see the City Airport just across the river! We sat there on one of the University benches and just watched aircrafts take off or land… and there was one every alternate minute. When I told my wife about my plane-spotting during the Delhi-Sydney journey, she immediately said, ‘Ah! But the planes we watched from the University of East London while munching on our Yorkies was unbeatable!’

‘Yes indeed,’ I replied, ‘but one is closer to the crafts when one is inside an aircraft.’

‘So how many pictures did you click?’

And this was my cue to open the folder where I had neatly arranged all the airport pictures… and we watched them all in awed silence. Right from the trolleys on the huge runways to the massive tails captured, from the frontal picture to the rear of some craft, from the man controlling the bridge that attaches itself to the craft to a view of the airplanes lined up as it was up for an inspection by the aircraft maintenance company! The aircraft collection always amuses us to no end.

It isn’t only planes that are visible from inside an aircraft! Luggage trolleys seem to be fighting for a shady spot in Delhi airport

An airport is the only place where a bridge comes to you! 🙂

‘Interesting pictures. Did you click any planes at the Bangkok airport or Sydney airport?’

‘They are all similar, unless you happen to see the terminal architecture in the background,’ I said, ‘and only then you’d know that this picture was clicked at the Suvarnabhumi or the Charles Kingford Smith.’

Capturing the close relationship between an aircraft and the airport. This is IGIA, New Delhi

…and this is the Bangkok airport!

She agreed to that and then I did tell her that the name Suvarnabhumi was chosen by HM King Bhumibol Adulyadej which meant The Golden Land. We then searched the net and found that this name was a traditional name for the Thailand-Cambodia-Laos-Burma region and that the name has a rather peculiar pronunciation for the Indian tongue.  At least I would never pronounce suvarnabhumi as su-wan-na-poom… and we did find that a bit unusual.

A virgin tail captured as we landed in Sydney!

An Australian aircraft with the Sydney clouds in the background!

‘Hope the Sydney airport doesn’t have any such pronunciation?’ asked my wife with a twinkle in her eyes.

‘No,’ I replied, ‘the Sydney airport name has a straightforward explanation. It is named after some Aussie aviation pioneer with the same name.’

After seeing all the aircraft pictures we thought it would be nice to put them all up in a blog post… well, at least the better ones. So this is exactly what I am doing right now. Enjoy the pictures…

The IGIA T3 as seen from inside an aircraft

It is interesting to watch the tails of planes with their logos and artworks!

Aircrafts lined up at the IGIA waiting for their turn to announce boarding!

Wings, propellers, and tails are all that you see for a while…

A lone plane about to begin its long journey can be such a poetic sight!

Ah! this is my favourite picture of an aircraft that I captured while walking to the boarding gate in Sydney!

Expedia made this trip to Sydney possible.
You can catch them on Facebook, twitter, and even on Youtube.

Arvind Passey
June 2012