New York holiday – pt1 La Guardia

For those that may have noticed me missing a few weeks back, I was on holiday to New York.

During my 8 days there I spend 2 days spotting at La Guardia which is a great airport for spotting. I also been a few hours to JFK, but quickly left as spotting there is not nice. One day was spend at Newark, with another few hours while flying out. On the way back a 5 hour layover at Detroit gave some more spotting opportunities.

Some of the La Guardia shots are here. The Newark shots will get a seperate thread sometime this week, the Detroit shots will get one thread as well. What I will do with JFK I have not decided upon. Probably nothing at all cause with the exception of a few Jetblue’s and regional jets not much was seen.

So, La Guardia then:

La Guardia is a smallish airport by New York standards, but nonetheless roughly the size of Gatwick in movements. Many of those movements are regional jets though, and the largest jet I ever saw was 757s and even those where rare.

Spotting is rather easy here. Pretty much the only airport in NY where spotting is made possible. In front of runway 4 there is a nice little park which the planes fly over. Fun part of this park is that it is on a hill so the planes go over very low indeed!

The other spot is on runway 31. Planes taking of from there have to bank immediately to the right. So the view from here is really great! Unfortunately for full frame shots a 400mm lense would be required. My lense is only 200mm so quite a bit of crapping was required.

To get to this spot is really easy. Exit the D terminal (Delta) and walk to the far left. Pass a few parking lots and you will see on your left a small park which name I forgot. You can walk in the park and walk along the lake. Another option is to walk up the ramp to the pedestrian bridge over Grand Central Parkway. From this elevated position you can make really nice photos as well.

This photo can also be seen at Jetphotos.net