Hot Air'chive'
The ramblings of an avgeek
You're going where? To fly in what?
Sometimes you just have to try and impress. Chat up lines must be believable. One Friday night in early August 1989 I was standing in a bar in London's West End. The Brief Encounter, situated just a stone's throw from Trafalgar Square, on St Martin's Lane, is sadly now long gone. This particular night I had started a conversation which ultimately proved to be the most important of my life. The man I had started talking to, after our eyes met across a crowded basement bar (yes, you know the drill), ended up being the love of my life. Ian and I are still together after 35 years, having finally married in 2022.
As part of my 'cunning plan' to appear urbane and interesting, I had mentioned that I was 'into aeroplanes' too, after my new found friend started talking about his early days in Jersey and the fact that his parents used to pack him off to 'watch the planes' at Jersey's then bustling airport. Little did I realise that I had stumbled upon one of the founder members of the self-styled Jersey Planespotters Society - membership, just two, Ian and one of his mates. Ian's reaction was perhaps unsurprisingly sceptical. He was obviously talking to someone who would say anything just to get another pint. This was my chance to impress.
I then uttered that immortal line - 'yes, I am actually flying to Denver in a couple of months’ time - only for the weekend – just to fly on a Convair CV-580 to Aspen'. Those words did the trick. Realisation dawned over his face, quicker than a sharp slap, as he suddenly clocked the fact that I was not telling tall tales and that he really had stumbled upon a likeminded soul – someone who knew what a CV-580 was. The rest was ‘plane’ sailing (apologies for that terrible pun). The next couple of hours were lost in a conversation, refreshingly two-sided and focussed almost entirely on our spotting ‘careers.’
Unsurprisingly, we met again, frequently, over the next couple of months and I think it is fair to say that both of us realised that we had met a kindred spirit who actually knew what they claimed to know! So much so that Ian told one of his friends that he had ‘met the man I am going to spend the rest of my life with…’ No pressure there then!
On Thursday 19th October 1989 I turned up at London’s Gatwick airport and checked in for Continental Airlines flight CO035 to Denver, continuing on to Honolulu. I was closely questioned on the brevity of my stay and was met with blank looks when I told the airline official checking documents before check-in about my desire to fly in a twin-turboprop airliner dating from the 1950s.
The flight was operated by Douglas DC-10-30 N14062, which had originally been delivered to Alitalia in 1973. The flight – lasting nine hours five minutes, was uneventful and we landed at Denver’s old airport – Stapleton – which, at the time was creaking at the seams with traffic it could barely handle. It was to be another six years before its successor, Denver International Airport, was to open.
After a full day of sightseeing, I found myself back at Stapleton, checking in for United Airlines flight UA3807 to Aspen, high in the Rockies. The flight was operated by Aspen Airways operating for United Express operating for United Airlines… The net result of the complexities of airline franchise agreements saw me walking out to board magnificent Convair CV-580 N73109. Sadly, the aircraft was wearing the ubiquitous United Express livery rather than the more eclectic Aspen Airways colours. This example was originally delivered to United Airlines in September 1952 as a piston engine CV-340 before being converted to the turboprop -580 in 1969. It was then purchased by Aspen Airways in 1973.
The 56-seat cabin was spacious and distinctly retro but all the more exciting for that. The views over the mountains during the 42-minute flight were spectacular. Our landing into Aspen, one of the most challenging commercial airports in the US because of the length of its runway and adjacent terrain, was as memorable as I had hoped.
I spent the next few hours exploring the small airport terminal and taking photos of the fair number of light and executive aircraft on the field. At lunchtime I reboarded N73109 once again for UA3828 back to Stapleton. This time, I had even less time aboard as we made the return journey in just 35 minutes.
‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get!’ A motto to live by if ever there were one. It certainly worked for me at Stapleton. I explained my passion to a frankly bewildered member of United ground crew, and they gave permission for me to step out on to the ramp and take photos of the three CV-580s awaiting their next journeys. It was but a small thing to surrender my passport to them while let loose. I doubt this would happen in many places today!
The next day I prepared to return to Gatwick and awaited the return of N14062 inbound from Hawaii. What struck me most of all, in the very early days of a relationship, was that I now had an understanding someone with whom I could share the details of my trips to fly on the weird, wonderful…and old! I am so fortunate that that remains the same today as it was then!
1984 and all that
Ok, I’ll admit it – I was in a bit of a state. 1984 was a momentous year for me – finishing university, trying to ‘find myself’ and working out how I wanted to use the skills I had learned, in the real world. At the beginning of the year, I had also bought my first serious camera and had been experimenting with photographing aircraft from the spectator terraces at both Heathrow and Gatwick. The end of May saw me heading away on my first dedicated solo overseas ‘spotting trip’ – a week in Frankfurt.
On Friday 25th May my long-suffering, but understanding parents dropped me at Heathrow Terminal 2 for Lufthansa flight LH033. The flight was operated by Airbus A300B4-203 D-AIBF – named ‘Kronberg/Taunus’ after the small town to the northwest of Frankfurt. This was only my 13th flight, a landmark that perhaps should have set alarms ringing, and my first flight on any Airbus.
The flight was packed and started normally enough. On take-off from Heathrow however we felt a slight jolt and we did not seem to be climbing at a normal rate. After a few minutes, the pilot informed us, very matter of factly, that ‘two of our tyres had blown on take-off.’ We were told that we would have to make a couple of low passes over the tower at Heathrow so that they could ‘take a look’ at our undercarriage which remained down. The atmosphere on board seemed calm and incredibly quiet. After the manoeuvre the pilot was back on again. We would now burn off fuel to reduce our landing weight and make a planned emergency landing back at Heathrow.
I was in a window seat and had a vey small Japanese gentleman sitting next to me. For the next hour, apart from offering its contents to me, he spent all his time supping from an obviously full hip flask. Our emergency landing of course involved what I term ‘a full head between the knees job’ which I recall was carried out in the same calm, measured way. The landing seemed very smooth and the only hint of something out of the ordinary was the sight of our aircraft being followed by at least four fire engines.
We reached a remote stand and were escorted from the aircraft down steps rather than slides. I do however remember one of the German cabin crew mentioning to another passenger that we should not rush as there was no chance that our undercarriage would collapse. We were returned to the terminal in a fleet of buses and then left in the care of the airline ground crew. The next three hours were characterised by confusion and uncertainty but eventually, we were split into two groups – those who wished to continue their journey to Frankfurt and those who did not. The latter was surprisingly large in number. So much so that those in the former were rebooked in Club Class on a British Airways flight several hours later. So, the day of my first Airbus flight also saw my first flight on a Lockheed L1011 TriStar, and my first in business class, as G-BBAH ‘The Sunsilk Rose’ took us to Germany in just short of 90 minutes.
Frankfurt Airport’s besucherterasse – its viewing terrace, was apparently the second most visited tourist attraction in 1984 (after Ludwig II’s Neuschwanstein in Bavaria). To a novice, the terrace was huge, covered much of the roof of the now terminal 1, and had plenty of angles to shoot aircraft on the terminal piers, on the runways and at the distant US Air Force base at Rhein/Main. Walking out on to the terrace for the first time was like being ‘a kid in a sweetshop.’ The difference now was that I had plenty of money – in the form of my new camera!
The subsequent days on the terrace in Frankfurt set a template for each of my trips which I have largely kept to over the intervening 40 years. An early night follows the preparation of my ‘gear’ for the next day and recording my log of sightings for the day now finished. An early start, no breakfast (much to my mum’s enduring chagrin), and rushing to get into pole position as the terrace opened at 8am. I stayed on the terrace until turfed off by the elderly security guard who used to patrol the huge terrace on his little bike. I returned to my hotel after grabbing something to eat before preparing to do it all again.
My next trip to Frankfurt followed just six months later. Before I left the UK I came out to my mum after a huge amount of personal angst. She assured me that she would tell my dad while I was away shooting aeroplanes. That however is a story for another day…
Back in the USSR...Aeroflot to Soviet Central Asia in 1983
In 1983 I was just 20. After my first holiday without my parents - a sedate coach tour of eight European countries in 12 days in 1981 - my plans called for something decidedly more ambitious. I booked a two-week guided tour with the Soviet state-owned tour agency Intourist which would take in Leningrad (as it then was), three cities in Central Asia (now Uzbekistan) and finally Moscow. This trip was memorable for so many reasons, and provided hours of frustrating entertainment for the budding avgeek.
It was another year before I was to lift a camera at an airport – with the overpowering Cold War suspicion, that was probably just as well. The atmosphere as it got closer to departure became unexpectedly more febrile. I was due to fly out from Gatwick to Leningrad on 10 September. On 1 September KE007 – a scheduled Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 flight from JFK to Seoul - was shot down by a Soviet SU-15 after leaving its intermediate stop in Anchorage. The aircraft was targeted after straying into Russian airspace and being mis-identified as a US spy plane. 269 passengers and crew lost their lives.
In the days after the disaster, the rhetoric reached fever pitch with rumours that Aeroflot would be banned from Western Europe. The Intourist response to the innocent question of what might happen if this ban were to be implemented while we were away was met with a simple – “we have to get you back – your visa will expire.” It was with this vision of being dumped on the East German border that I headed to Gatwick to be waved off by my very nervous mother. I need not have worried at this stage as TU-154B1 CCCP-85236 took a full load of British tourists to Leningrad in just over three hours.
The Soviet Union in 1983 definitely gave off an air of being grim. From the ever-watchful gaze of our tour guide Sveta, to the equally watchful gaze of the elderly ‘babushka’ ensconced on each hotel floor to ensure no misbehaviour, we all felt that we were under constant surveillance. Our arrival at Pulkovo airport for the nearly six-hour trip to Tashkent a couple of days later did nothing to take away that feeling. Security was intrusive and time-consuming and we were watched like hawks. In a familiar pattern on each of the public flights we took, that hawklike look was changed to resentful stares of the Soviet fare-paying passengers who were held back at the bottom of the aircraft’s steps to allow the ‘Westerners’ to board. I hazard to guess that this would not happen now…
Our flight SU5060 was memorable. The aircraft used was an IL-62 (not even an IL-62M to those in the know). CCCP-86688 was originally delivered in 1971 as a personal transport for Chairman Leonid Brezhnev. It was then transferred to the Uzbek directorate of Aeroflot in 1976 and operated commercial services until December 1989. The cabin was ‘old school’ – open luggage racks, food which arrived in brown paper bags and suspiciously brown ‘mineral water’. On asking for a blanket, one of the ladies in our party was told “no – it is being used!” It was taking this and subsequent flights that laid down the golden rule that Aeroflot flight attendants would get wider, hairier and grumpier the further south and east that we travelled.
After a few days in Tashkent, the modern-day capital of Uzbekistan, we headed to Bukhara – a major stop on the ancient Silk Road. We got there in an hour on what seemed like an equally ancient AN-24V CCCP-46387. Equipped with clearly bald tyres and half the world’s population of bluebottles, this was a flight we were all eager to leave. After just one night in Bukhara we found ourselves back at the tiny airport, awaiting another AN-24V (in this case CCCP-46766) which was to take us in one hour 15 minutes to the ancient city of Samarkand.
By this stage, as so often in these trips, I had joined a small ‘group within a group’ who had a similar outlook on life and looked after each other. Imagine the scene as we were sitting in the outdoor airside area at Bukhara airport and one or two of my co-travellers were whispering aircraft registrations to me as I was writing them down as answers to crossword clues in my puzzle magazine bought for the purpose in the UK. I’m sure it would not have taken a particularly bright member of the KGB to work out what I was doing, but it did feel unbelievably naughty! You may have guessed that my fellow tourists were by now well aware of my quest for exotic aircraft registration numbers – not that any really understood why I did it.
While talking about exotic registrations, this was the location for what I might call my ‘cop of the decade’ – ‘cop’ being code for an aircraft not previously seen. While sitting in the garden in front of the small terminal, we heard the unmistakable sound of four Ivchenko turboprops as a bare metal AN-12 freighter pulled up to park in front of us. Wearing a clearly and crudely stencilled registration CCCP-11413 and equally crudely stencilled Aeroflot titles, this aircraft then started loading what appeared to be troops – presumably heading for nearby Afghanistan, then under Soviet occupation. It was this sighting that I breathlessly reported to enthusiast group LAAS International when I got back. It is now shown in databases of Soviet aircraft as the first sighting for this particular airframe…how exciting!!!
A few days passed with tours of the glories of Samarkand and a road trip to nearby Shahrisabz, the birthplace of 14th century emperor Amir Timur, better known as Tamerlane. It was time to head to Moscow Vnukovo on another TU-154 – a -B2 CCCP-85433 of Aeroflot’s Uzbek Directorate. After the four-hour flight we threw ourselves into the touristy bit for three exhausting days and it was soon time to return to the UK.
Needless to say, the West had followed through and had banned Aeroflot flights while we were in Central Asia. Never fear however – help was at hand. Instead of boarding Aeroflot TU-154-B2 CCCP-85414 all the way from Sheremetyevo to Gatwick, we got as far as Prague in the then Czechoslovakia. Intourist had had a ‘cunning plan’ to get us home. On arrival in Prague, we simply changed planes and boarded CSA IL-62M OK-JBI for the one hour 30-minute flight to Gatwick. Another problem solved. I arrived back to some totally bemused parents who had turned up at the airport at the crack of dawn without having been given any idea on which flight I would be arriving or indeed when.
In summary, my first trip to the Soviet Union was simply unforgettable and oh how I wished I could have taken a camera…so many exotic aircraft, such different times!
(Another note to those in the know - you can change CCCP above for SSSR if you prefer!)
Why do I do it? Photograph aircraft that is...
Looking back on some of the stuff I wrote on my old website, I have to admit that I shudder. It has all the hallmarks of pretentious twaddle. Take this example – “While some enthusiasts delve into the mechanics of flight, I find myself captivated by the intricate tapestry of an aircraft’s livery, airline routes and diverse operating landscapes – an enduring obsession that shapes my worldview.” At the end of the day, I know what I meant. But I have to question – who wrote this rubbish?
Beneath the hyperbole there are some pretty basic truths. The most important is that I like looking at aircraft and as a result I like to photograph them. Aircraft can be sexy, elegant, exotic, awe-inspiring, colourful – the list goes on… In reality, my decision in 1976 to start collecting aircraft numbers and then to start taking a camera to the airport in 1984 were intrinsically linked. I wanted to record what I saw and the camera did that for me.
We each have our own way of spotting – some of my colleagues will only log an aircraft as ‘seen’ if they have a clear photo of the aircraft displaying its registration number. Others, like me, use the camera as a perhaps dominant partner in the process. I take photos and log registrations – the two are not mutually exclusive. There is, for example, a whole world of aircraft that I ‘shoot’ but do not log – what those in the know describe as ‘twindles and spindles’ – light aircraft et al.
Over the years, I have been fortunate to travel the world taking photos of aircraft. From tropical Thailand to the extreme sub-zero temperatures of Alaska in March – I hope nothing fazes me. Weather conditions have to be worked with – not seen as an immediate disincentive to get out there in the fresh (or jet fuel scented) air.
Uploading and having thousands of images accepted by JetPhotos.net has been great discipline for me – establishing my own workflow and trying to keep to what is acceptable and what is not. Having said that, it can be argued that each of these screened photo databases force their uploaders to conform to their well defined but still arbitrary standards and perhaps stifle creativity. The phrase I often see is ‘best keep for your personal collection’. Despite the disappointment of rejection there should be no reason to despair – there is nothing wrong with your very own personal collection – both for you and your wider audience. This is why I have never lost my enthusiasm for taking photos - the two can co-exist. I don’t see myself losing that enthusiasm any time soon…
How things have changed - proud to be a dinosaur
The relaunch of this website has set me thinking. It is a peculiarly British thing to 'collect' aircraft numbers. When I started in 1976 that was the undeniable definition of a plane spotter. Now, anyone who takes photographs of aircraft can claim the label as their own. The original definition, taken in tandem with a notebook, flask of tea and a less than pristine anorak (with a furry collar) - that was the stereotype back then - a member of an (almost) entirely male tribe.
In 1976 I had got bored with collecting stamps and was looking for another hobby. My parents were open to anything which was cheap, safe and required little parental interaction or time. One of my classmates (I was just 13 at the time) showed me a copy of the Ian Allan bible - "Civil Aircraft Markings" (CAM) which listed all UK registered aircraft along with a small host of foreign airliners likely to visit British airports. At the time we were living in Roehampton, under the approach to (the then) runway 28L at Heathrow.
Asking my parents for my own copy of CAM was a no brainer and that triggered a passion for 'collecting numbers' which has never left me. As I type this I am looking at shelves groaning under the weight of every edition of "JP Airline Fleets International" since 1980. After a couple of years of relying on CAM, and then the more grown up "World Airline Fleets" annual listing book, I moved on to the far more comprehensive and, dare I say "adult" JP - for the serious enthusiast with deeper pockets!
Until its last edition - 2013/14 - after purchase by the publishers of "Flight International", JP was my bible - my go to, and I religiously recorded my sightings by crossing a tiny box next to the aircraft registration to confirm that I had seen it. I relied on my paper, often dog-eared notebook, to record my sightings in the field, which I then transferred to my pristine JP. With each new edition I spent months transferring my ever increasing sightings from the old to the new while trying to track down those that had disappeared or changed registration. 48 years later I am still doing the same. Squirreling myself away in my office for hours on end, transferring my crosses, or ticks, or whatever you want to call them in to my current favourite fleet book - Air Britain's "Airline Fleets" annual.
Now, I know what you are going to say - fleet books are out of date before they hit the printers - you would be far better with your own database or one of the constantly updated huge online airframe lists. If I had one of those, like a number of my colleagues, some of a similar age, I would have a world of data at my fingertips. I would be able to tell you precisely when I saw a particular Airbus A300; how many Boeing 707s I have seen or indeed the grand total of aircraft I have seen since those halcyon days in 1976. All this, and a whole lot more would be available at the flick of a switch or worse....
I was chatting to a couple of young teenage enthusiasts a few days ago - both a real tonic with their enthusiasm and politeness when presented with a spotter from a distant generation - and they surprised me by religiously noting registrations. It is a relief that there are youngsters coming through but there the joy dissipated. They looked at me in total disbelief when I started talking about 'tick boxes' and updating an annual fleet list. They would not imagine any other way - database or nothing.
At 61 years of age, as with my unwillingness to learn to drive, I will state here and now that I am an unashamed dinosaur- 'Brian T Rex' perhaps - I am too old to change. When it comes to technology in all its forms - you name it - sophisticated photo editing software; a total reliance on FlightRadar 24 and ADSB Exchange; seeing the benefits and dangers of AI; or even understanding crypto currency, I am up there with the best, and youngest of them. However, leave my fleet books alone. I will continue to tick boxes and transfer my sightings from yearbook to yearbook. The problem will come, I hear you cry, when the publishers take stock and realise that their reliable dinosaurs are, like their prehistoric forebears, dwindling to an extent that continued publication becomes an economic no-no. Hopefully by then, I will be too old to sit at the end of a runway in the rain, nursing my flask of tea. When that day arrives. I can then fill my dotage with days of looking back on my spotting career through the vehicle of my fleet books, as one of a diminishing but unrepentant breed!
