Not totally quiet this week

This is written as I sit at gate B2 at Palm Beach International awaiting the departure of jetBlue flight 830 to New York's JF Kennedy International for another spotting and shooting weekend in New York - it looks like a really good weekened weather-wise, so I'm hoping for some great shooting.


This week, 3 lunch times were spent at Ft Lauderdale International - two at the spotting location at the end of runway 9L and one at the Hibiscus parking garage. The lunchtime I'd spent at the parking garage started out as westerly operations using 27R at the arrival/departure runway - as soon as I got to the top of hte parking garage - of course - they did a runway swap and seeing as I was there, I thought I might ats well stay. This was of course, the more interesting of the 3 days - the other two were the usual departures/arrivals - no special schemes or anthing like that. However, Wednesday (the garage day) was more interesting. As I got onto the top of the parking garage, I could see an interesting Embraer E-190 parked at Sheltair - I've never seen a private E-190 before - as it turned out, it was one of the Embraer corporate jets - and departed while I was there which gave this nice shot.

While watching the rest of the arrivals/departures, I happened to turn around and see a C-130 Hercules on approach to runweay 9R. For anyone that knows Ft Lauderdale, 9R is usually for B-1900's, smaller corporate jets, propellor aircraft and things of that size. So to see a C-130 on approach was very interesting. I think he realized the size of the runway as he executed a go-around at about 500ft, circled and landed on 9L. Now - these C-130's are very rarely in private schemes - usually assicoated with the government somehow - this is registered to an obscure LLC based in Wilmington, DE

Finally, flying high above Ft Lauderdale that was was a sky writer - not too sure what type of plane was doing it - but - they left a great images in the sky at one point - I think this will become the new header picture for the blog soon!

Now it's almost time to board for NY - I'm hoping that Emirates has put the A380 on todaty - it's the last chance I'll get to see it - hopefully Quantas has put Wunala Dreaming (search for that one - it's a stunning scheme) on, and the rest of the spotting gods will be good to me as well!

I'll post more from NY when I get home on Sunday evening.