Glenn Beasley's 2009 blogGAR Entries

Being a bit blurry eyed it wasn’t until I’d made some progress that I realised single runway operations were in force and landings were on 05L. I tried to capture a few with the full moon but it never really came off. However the light had an amazing redness to it as the sun rose so it wasn’t a completely wasted walk.

I made my mind up with the cold, frosty and potentially clear conditions to try a spot I’d not been to before for some departing shots from 05L with the Manchester Airport terminal in the background. This meant a good 40 minute trek from where I was, but it was all contributing to getting rid of the Christmas excess! Arriving at the spot there were a number of other spotters and photographers present and this steadily grew during the day.

On arrival the light was superb and the Singapore 777 and Qatar A330 both looked great on rotation. However my own personal Manchester cloud soon descended and set off some very fine snow soon after, and one or two who were present decided to call it a day. Conditions slowly improved again but not to the extent of earlier, and there was a little drama as First Choice 767 G-OOAN was followed down the runway by the fire crews. The aircraft was en route from Leeds to Barbados and was around 50 minutes into the journey when a technical problem forced them to dump fuel and divert into Manchester Airport. The aircraft safely departed around two hours later.

With the rush of transatlantic flights over by 12:00pm I headed back to the car and decided to have a lazy afternoon in the Aviation Viewing Park which was surprisingly quiet given it was a public holiday. It had been a cold start to 2010 though so that must have been a contributing factor. I thought the AVP might provide a few sunset opportunities and when Cathay 002 called up for departure at around 15:15pm I thought the shot may be on. It didn’t really work out, the position of the setting sun, my location and the rotation of the big 747 didn’t come together.