First of would like to wish to everyone a fantastic 2010!
On the 12th of December of last year I did my first visit to Girona airport. I've started to book a return ticket on easyjet from Lisbon to spend another weekend in Barajas airport, this meaning flying on Friday night and returning Sunday afternoon. Then, I saw on Ryanair website a sale of very cheap tickets, the usual thing. I've searched to where could I go for a day trip on Saturday leaving from Madrid for few euros. Girona it was! Had never been there and since they have 3 daily flights on that route and the prices were excellent I decided to go ahead and book a day trip for the that Saturday.
And so on that foggy Saturday morning I flew on EI-DHX operating flight FR9379 to GRO. The flight took about 1h05m and through it I could see lots and lots of mountains covered on the top with snow. The weather forcast for this day was a cold but sunny day at Girona which made this trip very enjoyable to me. I was expecting northern winds and to land on runway 02, but when we where overflying the city, located north of the airport, I realised that we would be landing on runway 20 instead. After making an on-time landing our B737 vacated on the last taxiway availabe and made a short taxi to it's stand. On the ground at GRO there was one FR B737, that never moved during the day although at night it wasn't there anymore, 2 bizjets and same other local aircrafts.
The place where I wanted first to go for spotting was the car park. located north of the terminal. From the moment I got off the plane until I arrived to the car park it must have been only 5 minutes. Here's a map to show you how easy is to get there.:
There are same people on the top level of the car park waving to their friends or family as they board the aircraft so it's quit possible that you will never be alone on this place. I saw a police car passing by inside the airport but they were not buther with me beiing there maybe because they are so used to seeing people over there. And so, with a beautiful sunshine behind me, I went for same photos:
You are probably thinking "Is that airport all about Ryanair?!". I'm afraid so. While inside the airport I took the official Winter timetable of this airport and you know what? Apart from a Transavia flight to Rotherdam (can't remeber how many times a week) and one weekly flight to Nador by Andalus you only have Ryanair on the schedule. Of course there are charters, and I was thinking I could be lucky to see one of those, but I didn't. I suppose the highlight was that French Customs airctaft...
Like I've said, I was expecting to have runway 02 to be in use, therfore I had planned how to get to the southern spotting location. Instead I had to find same place to the north to take approach shots during the afternoon. At around 11:30 I left the car park and walked for one hour to find a suitable spotting location. Here's a map to easy your life whenever you go to Girona:
It' wasn't easy because everytime I though this is the place I still needed a plane on approach to check out it I was too far away or too close. There were few arrivals in the afternoon, contrasting with the late morning rush hour that I was fortunate to photograph. To make matters worse clouds start to came up and getting all together.
15:30LT
I've made this last photo at 16:16. After that I decided to go back to the airport and wait for my return flight to Madrid.
It was already dark when I boarded flight FR9398 operated by EI-DWP, photographed twice during the day and by the way my 3rd flight on this one. After the one hour flight I was back to MAD. It was foggy just like in the morning and on my left I saw taxiing for departure my highlight of this whole weekend: ex- G-VROM now registered CP-2603 the first B744 of Aerosur.
With good weather like this I'm allways an happy spotter even if the traffic doesn't offer me any variety, after all it was a good chance to take photos of same Ryanairs that I only had seen in other airports. Maybe the Summer will bring a bigger variety...
