A quick Saturday afternoon visit to Ft Lauderdale.....

My son and I decided to take a short visit to Ft Lauderdale Saturday afternoon. There was one interesting possible sighting that was in the offing (see below), but the rest seemed to be the usual suspects. When we got to Ft Lauderdale, a fellow spotter told me that the airTran Orlando Magic special scheme was in - great I thought - it's going to be a productive afternoon. We were there 2 1/2 hours - the airTran never moved....annoying - I've never seem them do a 3+ hour turnaround - even on a Saturday!!!

But - there were a couple of interesting sights - the first this Westwind from Columbia. Westwinds are pretty rare at the best of times, but to have this clean looking version from Columbia made it a good catch. If I remember a fellow spotters translation, the company name on the plane is something to do with sugar.

The other good catch of the afternoon was this Condor B767-300ER. What was interesting about this visitor is this was originally a direct flight from Frankfurt to Cancun. However, after 10h 17m flight, they decided to stop at Ft Lauderdale for fuel for 20 mins before carrying on to Cancun. The only thing I can surmise is that when they loaded fuel and departed Frankfurt, they hadn't guessed the total affect of the winds across the Atlantic and so getting close to the US coast, they decided to stop for fuel. The decision must have been made a while into the flight as I saw this on Flightaware about 2 hours before the actual landing. But, it was literally a 20 minute fuel stop and then they were on their way to Cancun. But, it was nice to be able to catch Snoopy and Woodstock visiting Ft Lauderdale.

The sun is starting to get a little higher in the sky now which is causing a lot of the spotters to call it a season until probably September. Not me - I'll be there all summer - you never know what you are going to get - as witnessed by these two.....

In the meantime, more time spent behind the camera lens...