London Trip - June 2021

 June 8th to the 11th - London Trip

As we had a few days off together, Ash and I decided on a trip down south as there were a few movements at Heathrow we still had to catch up on.

June 8th

We headed down in the early hours and spent the full day at Heathrow catching the following arrivals on 27 Left.

Great to catch the Rwandair A330-200 9XR-WN to go with the A330-300 we caught last year.

Our first time catching an Aegean A321 Neo with SX-NAB

With little else of interest due for the rest of the afternoon we headed off for some food and early night, eighteen new numbers added to the log book.

June 9th 

Up early and a few shots grabbed from the north side of the approach before the sun moved around ...

Air India's B787-8 VT-ANP wearing the special "Mahatma Gandhi" tail

Finally managed to catch Gulf Air's great looking "Retro" B787-9 A9C-FG!

Longtail Aviation B747-400 Freighter VQ-BWT operating a cargo charter.

Etihad B787-10 A6-BMI wears small titles and logos as an "Eco Demonstrator"

A quick run around to the south side of the approach to catch Air China's B777-300 B-2032 in Star Alliance colours.... 

before heading over the Esso Garage to catch Air India B787-8 VT-ANP ....

...... and Gulf Air B787-9 A9C-FG departing.

Aeroflot's latest A350-900 VQ-BFZ arriving in the sunshine, nice to catch after all my dull shots of sister ship VQ-BFY at MAN!

US Air Force C17 00-0175 arriving in connection with the visit of the US President the following weekend.

Only thirteen more numbers logged at Heathrow for the day but at least we managed to catch a few required photos.

June 10th

Sadly this morning was very dull and murky, Air China's Star Alliance A350-900 B-308M looking rather awful with the lack of sun!

The only bright patch this morning coincided with the arrival of Blue Air's B737-MAX8 YR-MXA

TAP's great looking Retro Jet CS-TJR looking rather grey against the dull sky too

As there was so little else of interest for the day we decided on a run down to Bournemouth in the hope of obtaining a shot of one of the European Cargo A340-600s and a few extra numbers for the log book. The journey down only taking an hour and being well worth the effort despite the grey skies. Two A340-600s snapped in the shape of 9H-PPE and G-ECLB and sixteen numbers noted,

Back to Heathrow via a quick stop at Farnborough where we logged another fifteen Biz Jets.

LHR added another seventeen numbers today which included a few decent gap fillers.

June 11th

Another very dull and drab morning but we had to make an early get up to catch our first Vistara B787-9 when VT-TSD arrived,

along with United Airlines' first B767-300 (N674UA) to wear their latest colours

Once again, we had a very long spell with little of interest so we decided to run over to the Brooklands Museum, somewhere I had wanted to visit for many years. Luckily the sun made an appearance while I was walking around allowing better shots of the exhibits.

G-BBDG, my second to last Concorde frame, this leaves me needing only G-BSST which is on display at the Yeovilton Museum!

Back to Heathrow for a couple of hours to await the arrival of the afternoon's star visitor ...

AZAL Azerbaijan Airlines' B757-200 4K-AZ11, a rather rare aircraft to see in the UK these days, arriving on 27 Left just after 15.30.

We departed Heathrow just after the AZAL arrival and made it back home just after 7pm. 

A very enjoyable four days with plenty of variety and a good volume of new numbers.