2009
Sunday, 4th of January 2009
Hi all,
With the festivities of the last two weeks I finally had some time to handle some of the > 400 unedited and unsorted photos I still have from last summer. I managed to complete the photos of my trip to the La Ferte Alais airshow and the open house of the Royal Netherlands Air Force at Leeuwarden air base. I do have to note that I'm not finished with uploading all of the La Ferte Alais pictures yet.
The only airshow photos I still have to work on are those from the Bitburg/Luxemburg air show. I hope to finish them somewhere this month.
Best wishes for 2009!
With the festivities of the last two weeks I finally had some time to handle some of the > 400 unedited and unsorted photos I still have from last summer. I managed to complete the photos of my trip to the La Ferte Alais airshow and the open house of the Royal Netherlands Air Force at Leeuwarden air base. I do have to note that I'm not finished with uploading all of the La Ferte Alais pictures yet.
The only airshow photos I still have to work on are those from the Bitburg/Luxemburg air show. I hope to finish them somewhere this month.
Best wishes for 2009!
comments (1)
Flight report: EHAM-LEMD-LEBB
Monday, 24th of November 2008
Yesterday, I had to fly to Bilbao where I was required for a project meeting. Although the initial choice was to fly with KLM/Air France via Paris, the company's travel agency booked a light with Iberia via Madrid. A decision I was very happy with, as you can read further on in this report.
Iberia was an airliner I haven't flew with before. The first flight to Madrid would be performed with an Airbus A319, which was also a new type of plane for me. I made it myself easy by checking in online the day before, so I had all the boarding tickets.
I arrived early at Schiphol for my flight to Madrid. Security was passed easily for me. My colleague had a bit more problems to get passed, because he had a small pocket knive with him, The knive is small enough that it is legal to carry it on board, but it took some time before the security was convinced.
Our flight would leave from gate B13 and we found a table at the end of the pier, so we could do some work and had a great look on the Kaagbaan 24/06 runway. Let me rephrase that: We had a great look on how the visibility reduced and the snow was covering the runway. It was already a couple of days bad weather with snow and wind and a number of flight had been delayed or cancelled. Hopefully our flight would nog be cancelled.
We had to board at 15:15 and at that time, the pilots were there, the flight attendants where there, the ground staff was there, but the A319 was missing. Fortunately it arrived 5 minutes later. That meant that we left 45 minutes later than planned. Usually that is no problem, except if you have to catch your connection in Madrid, with only 1 hour time to switch gates.
The flight was great. Getting through the snow clouds was much fun (turbulence) and finally above the clouds, I could see the sun preparing itself for the night. Unfortunately Iberia has lowered itself to that of the low-cost companies: low quality food has to be bought at expensive prices. I skipped the meal and started to worry about our connection flight in Madrid, because the pilot had to land on runway 36 at Madrid. This means you have to go around the entire airfield, which takes about 10 minutes.
A flight attendant had already told us that we would leave from the same terminal at gate J58. When we deboarded the plane, this flight attendant mentioned to look behind us to see at which gate we where. Guess what: J58. That meant that we would fly with the same plane to Bilbao! What a luck!
The flight to Bilboa was short and a bit of fun with some turbulence and no more exciting things happened.
I'm currently in the Andrea hotel in Derio, which is right under the approach of runway 30, so I have a good look at the planes. Although it's raining cats and dogs here and I have only free time in the evening.
Remember I told you that I was glad the travel agency booked Iberia instead of KLM? I heard today that one of the partners could not fly to Bilbao, because KLM cancelled most of its flights late yesterday afternoon. The next flight for him would be Tuesday evening, which is after the project meeting has ended.
Wednesday I fly back.
Iberia was an airliner I haven't flew with before. The first flight to Madrid would be performed with an Airbus A319, which was also a new type of plane for me. I made it myself easy by checking in online the day before, so I had all the boarding tickets.
I arrived early at Schiphol for my flight to Madrid. Security was passed easily for me. My colleague had a bit more problems to get passed, because he had a small pocket knive with him, The knive is small enough that it is legal to carry it on board, but it took some time before the security was convinced.
Our flight would leave from gate B13 and we found a table at the end of the pier, so we could do some work and had a great look on the Kaagbaan 24/06 runway. Let me rephrase that: We had a great look on how the visibility reduced and the snow was covering the runway. It was already a couple of days bad weather with snow and wind and a number of flight had been delayed or cancelled. Hopefully our flight would nog be cancelled.
We had to board at 15:15 and at that time, the pilots were there, the flight attendants where there, the ground staff was there, but the A319 was missing. Fortunately it arrived 5 minutes later. That meant that we left 45 minutes later than planned. Usually that is no problem, except if you have to catch your connection in Madrid, with only 1 hour time to switch gates.
The flight was great. Getting through the snow clouds was much fun (turbulence) and finally above the clouds, I could see the sun preparing itself for the night. Unfortunately Iberia has lowered itself to that of the low-cost companies: low quality food has to be bought at expensive prices. I skipped the meal and started to worry about our connection flight in Madrid, because the pilot had to land on runway 36 at Madrid. This means you have to go around the entire airfield, which takes about 10 minutes.
A flight attendant had already told us that we would leave from the same terminal at gate J58. When we deboarded the plane, this flight attendant mentioned to look behind us to see at which gate we where. Guess what: J58. That meant that we would fly with the same plane to Bilbao! What a luck!
The flight to Bilboa was short and a bit of fun with some turbulence and no more exciting things happened.
I'm currently in the Andrea hotel in Derio, which is right under the approach of runway 30, so I have a good look at the planes. Although it's raining cats and dogs here and I have only free time in the evening.
Remember I told you that I was glad the travel agency booked Iberia instead of KLM? I heard today that one of the partners could not fly to Bilbao, because KLM cancelled most of its flights late yesterday afternoon. The next flight for him would be Tuesday evening, which is after the project meeting has ended.
Wednesday I fly back.
Schiphol
Tuesday, 26th of August 2008
Hi all,
For a change, I had a car at my disposal this weekend. The Toyota Prius is a research vehicle from my employer. Because of the good weather I decided to take this very efficient car to the big-fuel consumers at Schiphol airport. The result of two hours spotting can be found here.
The events in Paris and Luxembourg will take a while before they will appear on this website. I'm still very busy with other things that have a higher priority. Luckily, the weather is getting worse, which means I need to have something to do on the rainy Sundays this autumn. So don't worry! Reports and photos will appear, although it is going to take a while.
For a change, I had a car at my disposal this weekend. The Toyota Prius is a research vehicle from my employer. Because of the good weather I decided to take this very efficient car to the big-fuel consumers at Schiphol airport. The result of two hours spotting can be found here.
The events in Paris and Luxembourg will take a while before they will appear on this website. I'm still very busy with other things that have a higher priority. Luckily, the weather is getting worse, which means I need to have something to do on the rainy Sundays this autumn. So don't worry! Reports and photos will appear, although it is going to take a while.
