2015 - summary

The year nears it end. It's finally time to summarize it. It was a rich year. Rich in trips, photo opportunities and aviation related activity.

I shall start with my personal TOP5 photos of the year. In no special order. I tried to  show a diversified range of shots. Not necessarily top quality, but all of them represent something that might be special to me (like let's say a memory) about it. Choosing just 5 wasn't easy. Sometimes I had to go with the one that has a bigger story behind it.

1. Arriving back home after a short trip to fly a T154. The weather over Warsaw was clearly fantastic giving me an opportunity to see almost my entire city from top with good light. Both airports in sight, downtown and major routes leading in and out. A great summary of the entire trip. Later during the year I luckily managed to repeat it on arrival from ARN. Entry source of the photo.

2. An Iran Air Boeing 747-SP cockpit in Kuala Lumpur after a flight from Tehran. This photo as a summary of the Iran trip in October. A dream come true to fly the plane and see an active cockpit. Entry source.

3. Antonov 225 Mriya. The biggest flying plane there is. Just one active. So seeing it fly is incredible. I decided to go to Ostrava to witness it land over there. The drive was much longer than my stay, but hey! you need some dedication to achieve your goals. Entry source.

4. Paris Air Show 2015 was the spark for a aviation oriented trip to Paris. Spotting both at Orly and Roissy. Three days, all spent at different airports. My first A350 and first visit at PAS. For the entire trip. Entry source.

5. Work being an important part of anyones life takes a lot of time and sometimes gives opportunities. Mine does give me some spotting ones. Like this Eurowings A320 being pushed back with some winterish light and reflections from the water. At first sight - a normal photo - but for me, it may symbolize the working part of my year (maybe, perhaps, I didn't yet get to other photos from work that would fit here better). Entry source. Many photo opportunities (and views) like that (or the El Al 737 at the bottom of the entry) are given to me at work. It does really sooth an eye and is a heavy reason why to keep the job.

And now back to the beginning.

EPWA 2015.11.11

The sky is gray, nothing special happens, work continues the same way it does everyday. Two simple shots from the ground. An El Al Boeing 737 comes into his stand after a flight from Tel Aviv.
Also it coincides that it is our national independence day here in Poland.

4X-EKL

4X-EKL

EPWA 2015.11.18

Another rainy day at work. Just two from the ramp.

SP-EQL

SP-LLE

EPWA 2015.11.19

Just another day at work. There was a slight rainfall during the night, so when the sun came out, the tarmac was wet, and nicely illuminated the area. Most of my attention came to the Eurowings A320 from DUS

D-AIZR

EPWA 2015.09.16 B77F Etihad Cargo & Trade Air F100

Last year we had a Etihad cargo triple seven visiting WAW, this year the story repeated. Twice even, with some horses this time. Coincidentally the day of the Etihad departure a Trade Air Fokker 100 operated a charter to Warsaw. Both arr and dep.

9A-BTD Trade Air F100 departure

A6-DDC departing

LO332 CDG-WAW 2015.06.23

After a short pre-flight spotting at the airport (mostly at T1) came the time to go for the flight. So after over two hours of walking around the entire airport, photographing planes and the interior of the terminals. The construction of T1 is kinda funny. It has a couple of satellites around the main building that you can get to with underground walkways. A cool experience.
The flight itself:

23 June 2015
LO332 (1045-1300) CDG-WAW
SP-LNE Embraer 195

The flight passes quickly without any special events. The sun shines nicely, but clouds block the view of the ground. I'm seating at 18D.

Departing CDG with a A380 waiting for us to pass so it can taxi to its stand.

Paris CDG pre-flight spotting LFPG/CDG 2015.06.23

Yesterday we returned with Robert home pretty late, the night was not going to be very long. Before ending our day we packed our suitcases and checked-in for our flights back home. He was bound to depart in the morning (7am-ish), my flight was 3 hours later. The plan was easy, we drive to the airport, I return the car to the rental service and he goes for his flight. Meanwhile having a couple of hours to spent I decided to walk around the airport and perhaps take some pictures. I couldn't leave my bag anyway before check-in for my flight opened. My conclusions after the morning? Terminal 3 has nearly no spotting opportunities, Terminal 2 is hard and not many spots, Terminal 1 is on the other side pretty nice. Open air, planes very close and so on. Most of the pictures where taken from T1. For more info and pictures of the terminals visit my entry about LO332.

F-RAJB

9K-AME

EPWA spotting 2015.06.10

Taking a break in a training session. What better way than to go and take a couple of pictures with the sun nicely shining from upfront creating a gold-like feeling.

EPWA spotting 2015.06.08

A short trip to the airport for an attempt to get a couple sunset photos, the sun didn't play exactly as I wanted, but the two last photos are rather ok.

F-GTAJ

Jula private King Air 200 SE-KXM

P4-MGU at EPWA 2015.06.05

Two, quick photos of this A319 ACJ resting, or rather having a sauna, in Warsaw.

P4-MGU
Global Jet Luxembourg
Serial number: 5445

Type: 319-115XCJ
First flight date: 18.02.2013

Lufthansa Cargo Boeing 777F. 2015.03.20-21

Due to a short strike of the Lufthansa crew, we did not see many LH movements in WAW for a couple of days. Presumably they had some cargo laying off in Warsaw that needed to be quickly transported out of Warsaw and the means of the underbelly of the daily rotations with the A320 family planes were not enough to deal with the backlog. Se they decided to send in a one-time cargo only flight to WAW operated by a Lufthansa Cargo Boeing 777. It arrived on Friday the 20th of March 2015 and departed the next day. As I was too lazy to go for some night photos of the beauty while it was resting on PPS12 (today I regret a little bit that laziness) o I did use the photos made by my friends to show you how it looked.
For the departure itself I put my bets on a "into the sun" picture, did it work? I'm not fully satisfied with the effects, I kinda wanted the sun to be tad lower, but hey! that's not up to me.

Night time, photo copyright: Marcin Sikorzak