London Heathrow #1

Two days ago I transited through London Heathrow [ICAO code: EGLL] airport - a memorable experience as it turned out!

I had never transited through Heathrow before. It is a huge airport, and I knew I had to go through immigration and transfer from terminal 5 to terminal 1. I had 3 hours to do it.

Turns out it was very very easy! On arrival, I asked and was directed to the terminal transfer bus. This resulted in a 17/ 18 minute ride around airside to get to terminal 1 - a free airside tour thrown in :-) Nice. Immigration was done in terminal 1 and it didn't take long before I was in the very familiar surroundings of the terminal 1 departure area.

I was heading to Dublin, and so after a feed, a walk around and a few photos, I headed to the departure gates - waiting at gate 8 initially, before being directed to gate 78 - a long walk, although probably only 5 minutes.

Anyway, here are a few photos from the main terminal 1 area - from behind the Giraffe food outlet. Top to bottom we have:

Boeing 787-8, N961AM, of AeroMexico
Boeing 737-8K2, PH-BXA, of KLM in an historic livery
Boeing 777-368/ER, HZ-AK13, of Saudi Arabian
Boeing 777-336ER, G-STBK, of British Airways
Airbus A380-841, 9M-MND [as best I can tell], of Malaysia Airlines

Random pictures from Brussels

I'm in the middle of my holidays and right now I am in Brussels.

Yesterday I went to a museum which contained a lot of different aircraft - more pictures from there shortly. For now however are a few "random" shots I took of aircraft as they past overhead of departure from Brussels National Airport/ Zaventum [ICAO: EBBR].

Top to bottom are:

Airbus A330-301, OO-SFN, registered to Brussels Airlines
Boeing 747-400F, rego unknown, registered to Saudi Arabian Cargo Airlines
Boeing 737-8K5, OO-JAD, registered to Jetairfly [TUI Airlines Belgium]
Boeing 737-4Q8, rego unknown, registered to Tailwind Airlines

Saudi Arabian BBJ at Wellington

Thanks to the report on the MRC Aviation blog I managed to get some pictures of the Saudi Ministry of Finance BBJ today. It is parked on the RNZAF Air Movements Base apron.

Night shots are not my specialty, but here are two photos. The first is taken from the Wellington Aero Club, at the far end of the apron [the red blob is a light on an Air National BAE J32]. The second is from much closer with just a fence between us. Unfortunately, with the fence I was not able to use the tripod for that shot.