Jakarta

Hello

Photos from my trip to Kuala Lumpur seem to have gone down well, so I thought you may be interested to see some pictures from another stop on my trip round South East Asia – Jakarta.

I arrived from Singapore at about 1130pm meaning that it was well after midnight by the time I had checked into the Airport Hotel. Although I understand that all rooms overlook the action, I made sure with the receptionist that my room would have a view and was told that I wouldn’t be disappointed. I wasn’t when I arrived in it and saw a Garuda A330 snoozing the night away immediately outside my window, so I decided to get straight to sleep to make an early start the next morning.

Waking up, the A.330 had left, but in daylight the view over one of the runways was excellent. I spent most of the morning here, and this is typical of the view from my room:-

PK-GZI by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

This side of the airport served all international flights along with the domestic services of Garuda and Air Asia, and I was soon logging Garuda 737s at a prodigious rate. There was plenty of variety, though, with a couple of Merpati 737s:-

PK-MDF by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

And a Wings MD-80:-

PK-WIF by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

At about 11am the cleaners wanted to clean my room, so I used this as a cue to visit the other side of the airport. A fleet of courtesy buses make the journey in about 15 minutes and deliver you to each of the terminals. All of the terminals are joined to each other in a semi circle, and each one has a ‘waving gallery’ on the roof. Things are pretty chaotic here – only paasengers are allowed into the terminals, and the brightly coloured ticket offices for the local carriers are adorned with paintings of Concordes and 747s in their liveries, so I eagerly visited the first waving gallery to see what awaited me.

Each one is laid out the same, and gives slightly different views of the apron, meaning that you have to visit each one to see everything. The last one is particualrly important, as it offers the best views of the maintenance / storage area, and I found the one above the Sriwijaya Air terminal had the best views of the runway. This was typical of the view – as you can see, there were four Sriwijaya 737s and the Lion Air had just landed:-

PK-CJT by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

Movements on this side were pretty continuous, with several being operated by 737-200s:-

PK-YRT by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

Another -200 operator was RPX Air whose aircraft were parked dangerously close to the storage area:-

PK-RPI by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

At the other end of the 737’s evolution, there was never long to wait for a Lion Air 737-900:-

PK-LGQ by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

While Batavia provided a mix of 737s and A.320s:-

PK-YVG by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

At 5pm I decided to return to my room for the remainder of the day, where I saw 146 PK-RAY

PK-RAY by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

And just before it got dark one of the more interesting international flights, Shenzen 737 B-5345:-

B-5345 by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

Once it got dark unfortunately the apron lighting wasn’t really powerful enough to allow me to continue, but that shouldn’t detract from one of the most interesting, enjoyable and rewarding days I have had in 30 years of spotting.

Lots more photos from Jakarta can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/indiaecho/

Happy new year.

Neil