Real Aviation Photos

Took this pic a few weeks ago early in the morning on Stand 54 at Manchester Airport as I was working on an Air France Airbus A320. The rising sun, which was behind the aircraft, was shining through the high bypass duct of the engine and illuminating the fan blades from behind. I thought it looked pretty cool: You might notice some numbers written on the fan blades in marker. These are there because, although the blades are precision made, they still have to be balanced out so that no blade weighs noticeably more or less than any of the others, as would put an eccentric strain on the fan assembly as it spun at high speed. The balancing is done by placing blades…

Starting from UK, the Silver Spitfire G-IRTY has progressed to Japan on her around the world flight. 76 years old and still going strong! Arrived from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russia to New Chitose, Japan on late Saturday afternoon, September 21. Continuing the journey this morning. Thumbs up and ready to go! Below is a link to the project website, including live tracking. Go see it, if you get a chance! The official Silver Spitfire website

Just a few shots from yesterday evening's fun after work. https://photos.app.goo.gl/F4wpxaWpmFnMny91A https://photos.app.goo.gl/KAUEsgK1Rzex67qg6

Just a shot I took before putting the Hawk to bed the other night. (taken at Gundy's: O38)

F/A-18 Hornet leaving The Boat...Slow Motion

Lived In Bangkok now for 12 years and never new this beach existed. Now I have a reason to fly to PHUKET 😎

Yesterday, I took a trip out to Atlanta to have a look at the Boeing 747-400. N661US, in particular, was the first Boeing 747-400 built and participated in Boeing's flight test certification before being delivered to Northwest. Now, let's jump on board. The nose section of the Boeing 747-400. The first time I've ever sat in a First Class seat. Go figure we're not actually flying anywhere. The first time I've ever been in the upper deck of a Boeing 747-400. If it looks like I'm out on the wing, it's because....I'm out on the wing. You really don't get a good grasp of how big the Boeing 747-400 is until....WEL....you're actually standing right …

A few pics from this morning taken from my phone whilst waiting for some late cargo to load into the front hold of A321 Echo Delta on Stand 26 at EGCC. The first one is from my viewpoint sitting on the cargo conveyor driven up to the front hold. Echo Delta (LY-VED) is leased by Thomas Cook, but still wears her old Aeroflot main paint scheme with a few temporary Thomas Cook stickers covering the Aeroflot markings. You can see she has the tug and bar connected and the ground power is still plugged in. She also still has the chocks on the nose wheel because the air bridge has not yet been retracted. The hole you can see on the red cheat line of her livery, just above an…

En route to ICN. Figured this would make a nice desktop background 😁 file4 by Chris Crawford, on Flickr

Whilst we were waiting for a late crew bag to arrive at work (which never did incidentally), I was sat up in the bulk cargo compartment of an A330 tonight. I stayed up there to load the stuff which did actually go in there though, so I thought I'd take a few pics of it and explain what all the stuff is, since most people never get to see this kind of thing. Hope you find it interesting. The aircraft in these pictures is G-CHTZ, a Thomas Cook Airbus A330-200 with two Rolls Royce Trent 700 engines, Maker's Serial No: 398. It is almost eighteen years old. The aeroplane was on Stand 29 of Pier C at EGCC Manchester Airport. So, to explain about what the bulk cargo compart…

What a view... now simulate that in a flight sim. Cumulus Caribbean

I'd just finished doing a load up on an A321 at 5.45am this morning at Manchester Airport Stand 11 (EGCC); we were backing the vehicles off the aeroplane in preparation for pushing it out and I noticed the sky was really pretty, so I got my phone out and snapped this, when I turned round, to catch the eye of the guy driving the conveyor so i knew he was ready to follow my signals for backing off, I saw he had his phone out taking the same pic lol. A phone picture doesn't really do it justice to be honest, but here it is anyway...

Taken when the snow was beginning to 'stick' at around 1am this morning. Not too long after I took this pic, that snow started really coming down pretty hard and the snowploughs, gritters, de-icers etc descended on the apron and commenced clearing the taxiways, roadways, ramps where aeroplanes were expected, and both runways, but later they got on the radio and advised the tower that they could not keep ahead of the snow build up on both runways, and recommended closing one runway down. Meanwhile we were having fun trying to drive vehicles about in that snow.

On my way to and from Europe in 1987, scans I made of 35mm pics taken with a Canon Sure Shot. Among the pics you can see DFW on our way back from Frankfurt, the beautiful US Southwest desert, the Sierras, Frankfurt Airport, and images over Scotland in the winter time. John

These real images are from the usual soup you see east of the Mississippi River, where you can hardly see thirty miles into the distance. I have flown far and wife over our wonderful continent, upwards to 300 days a year, and only would have two handfuls of the crystal clear skies we beg of our sims.... These pics are the average, what I've seen as a passenger and what I have seen as a flight student, and as a trike pilot.... John

Hi I have a load of photos on my site [link removed] I have alot of editing to do yet, however I made a start. Rgds Paul

Got asked to check the engines on an A321 this morning, as apparently one of them had 'some damage' and it had been suggested we might have caused it at Manchester prior to it departing for Turkey earlier yesterday. The damage didn't prevent it from flying back into Manchester from Antalya, but when it landed and we'd finished unloading it and stuff, I had a look and I took this picture, where you can see the fan blade is sort of 'dog eared' at the bottom (I've had to tweak the colours and sharpen a bit because it was dark and very amber coloured owing to the airport's sodium lights on the ramp when I took it at about 5.30 am). Interesting to note how the fan blade is ben…

Quick phone snap I took this morning at about 3.30am. This is a Thomas Cook A330-200, having just been backed off from stand 32, to then be towed onto the remote stand 66. This is done so that aeroplanes which won't be leaving for a while can park up and they do not clog up the more useful stands which have air bridges. To do this, I did the road signalling to allow it to push off stand 32, then jumped into an EBT and raced over to stand 66 where it was being towed to, then guided it onto 66. At night, especially in the wet when there are a lot of reflections, the tug driver can't see the road markings or the turnoff markers for the stand very well, or see the c…

The winter ops guys, who do anti icing and de icing at EGCC had an open day today on Stand 21 of EGCC, where you could check out the equipment and ask about stuff. I was actually off work today, but I thought it would be interesting, so I drove in to attend it anyway. First pic shows one of the new white MAG de icing trucks, this can spray different mixtures of glycol and heated water (up to 80 degrees) so it can either de ice, or anti ice an aeroplane. To the right of that is the ant-icing truck which they do the runways with if they think it is going to ice over, it has the icing spray arms partially folded, with those extended, it can spray an area of runway 30 me…

Couple of phone pics I took of Barton Aerodrome (or Manchester City Airport as they call it these days) today whilst I was there getting my CAA medical check. The very cool 1930s-era control tower at Barton and the GA parking bit near the tower.

This photo was taken by officer Jeff Clarke from the Toronto Police Marine Unit during the Toronto International Air Show, what can I say....NAILED IT:

Some pictures I took at last weekend's Bray Air Show, Co Wicklow, Ireland 🙂 https://c.gmx.net/@334598694001181103/cN8gsNtPSuOXA4qFpQxD8Q best copy-paste this link into your browser. When calling up a picture click once into it to get rid of the grey heading piece to see it in its entirety. Use the <- and -> arrow-keys on your keyboard to go forward or back. Cheers Mallard

The Royal Air Force is celebrating its centenary this year. As part of the commemorative events, the RAF today laid on a massive flypast over central London. It was said to have been a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of close to 100 aircraft, all currently in service and included the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (which is part of the RAF) and, of course, the Red Arrows. I took my family and my camera. Unfortunately it was under a quite grey overcast so the pictures weren't as good as they might have been, but some were still worth it, especially the last two. Helicopters everywhere.... (Pumas and Chinooks) BBMF Dakota BBMF Lancaster, Spitfires…

Here's a snap of a Norwegian Boeing 737-800 on stand 9 at EGCC early this morning, about 2am if I recall correctly. Without an air bridge on that stand, we've used mobile stairs front and rear to board people, the GPU is still connected at this point, as passengers board but it went on the APU right after this pic so we disconnected the power moments after this pic was taken, but not before we'd had to offload a bag from the rear hold, which is annoying, but happens, then we pushed it out. For those of you who use GSX etc and who are curious about the GPU and how all that stuff works. The big yellow box you can see has two lights on it which are illuminated, there ar…