Luton - 08/03/14

Saturday March 8th saw my first visit to Luton in nearly two years. and the first 'away day' of 2014.

We headed for the unofficial vantage point on the south side of the airport, but one unwelcome development at the site, at least as far we photographers are concerned, is the erection of a second taller fence on the runway side of the existing chain link structure.

At the moment (and apologies to those who don’t know the area), the second fence extends along the side of the eastern waste ground as far as the crash gate; whether it will be extended westwards alongside the farmer’s field is unknown. If that does happen, we are all going to need some taller step ladders! (Steps that don’t sink into the boggy ground at inopportune moments would also be welcome...)

The second unwelcome feature of the day, not just for us but also for the pilots, was a strong crosswind blowing across runway 08/26. Judging by the amount of smoke coming from aircraft wheels on landing, the result of the wind’s sideways loading of the undercarriages, the engineers were not going to be too impressed at having to replace all those tyres early!

Despite all this, a very pleasant couple of hours were spent photographing the various comings and goings - let’s just hope developments don’t stop that happening in the future.

DHL Airbus A300-600 D-AEAC enters the runway ahead of its departure for Leipzig.



Another very welcome Airbus visitor was 9K-GEA, an A319CJ of the Kuwaiti Government.





With the crisis in Ukraine very much in the news, I did wonder whether the visit of IAI Galaxy 200 UR-PRM was in any way connected with events in that troubled country. This particular aircraft was a frequent Luton visitor in its previous guise as SX-TAJ.



A long way from home is Mexican-registered Gulfstream G550 XA-CHR.



The newest and largest aircraft in the Gulfstream portfolio is the G650. N650MT’s colour scheme does much to enhance the already sleek lines of the airframe.



A brace of Dassault Falcon 7Xs – LX-USM is operated by Global Jet Concept, and MasterJet is the operator of CS-DTD.





Air Hamburg’s Cessna 560 Citation Excel D-CFLY eventually made it on to the runway.



Bombardier’s products were much in evidence during the day. London Executive Aviation’s G-KSFR is a Challenger 300, VistaJet Malta’s 9H-VJA is a Global Express XRS as is N624BP, while M-YSIA is a Global 5000.