Plane Excitement

Our house lies under the approach to Adelaide airport.  Planes roar overhead with a regularity that makes me thankful that Adelaide airport is not the busiest of airports.  After the planes comes their vortex, a wake of disturbed air that roars and snaps and ruffles the tops of the trees with a promise of turbulence. Roger has never been happier, or more closely glued to Flight Radar.

The planes that come in to Adelaide airport usually aren't very big in the grand scheme of aeroplane sizing.  We watch Qantas, Virgin, and Alliance shuttle back and forth to Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, and minor destinations such as Alice Springs and Hobart.  Roger runs outside to supervise the passing of the 'big' ones: Qatar, Singapore Airlines, Emirates, the occasional freight special like the one that brought elephants from Perth to Adelaide en route to Monarto Zoo.

 

A couple of nights ago Roger relaxed in the lounge room, having supervised Qatar's approach to the airport and thence put Flight Radar to bed for the night.  There he sat, all relaxed, and something big roared overhead.  A plane so ginormous, so loud and different from all the others, that by the time he had madly scrambled out of his chair and out into the back yard it had gone from sight and all he was left with was the vortex snapping at the trees.  He opened Flight Radar and wept.  "An A380! And I missed it! Why didn't I check Flight Radar better!  Why didn't I stay outside for 10 more minutes!  I can't believe I missed an A380!  What was it doing here anyway?"

Diverting, as it turned out, from its Sydney flight path due to a medical emergency, and due to take off again a shade past 10pm.  In less time than it took to say 'plane-spotter' we were in the car and off down to the airport along with all the other Flight Radar followers in Adelaide, creating traffic jams up and down and all around wherever there was a view of the runway.

Jams of plane-spotters.

 

Suspense built with every plane that trundled up or down the runway.  People who had forgotten to grab their jumpers wrapped themselves in picnic blankets.  Photographers set up tripods and cameras, some of them even climbed on top of cars to get a better view.  Clusters of plane spotters huddled over Flight Radar just in case it could tell them something that their own eyes couldn't.

This may be summer but I'm not silly, I brought my jacket.

 

A Virgin Airways flight took off, allowing all the photographers to test their settings and make appropriate adjustments.

 

Then came the Qatar Dreamliner, normally greeted with excitement but now merely the warm up for the big event.

 

And finally, to the collective gasp of all the watchers, the A380 made its appearance and, to their collective sigh, disappeared Sydney-bound in very short order and with no drama at all.

Becoming airborne at the same spot, but taking a while to gain altitude.

 

We went home through the traffic jam and crawled into bed, Roger alternating between bouts of despair that he had missed an A380 right overhead, and bouts of euphoria that he had at least seen it take off.  The dogs thought that we were quite mad.

Such is the life of a plane-spotter.