ACE-MAN with Thomas Cook

On Holiday
Whilst I was on holiday I saw a few good movements at ACE. The special Binter 737 was a frequent visitor, which was very nice to see, and there is LOTS of Futura and Air Europa. On the Thursday British day, a MON A332 was in, and I saw 2 MON A300s arrive, XL had sent a 762 from somewhere, probably LGW. In the evening I waited at the beach for a MON A300 to takeoff right over the beach back to Dublin, which was a nice sight.
I also watched an Air Berlin A320 do a missed approach right in front of my hotel, which was very interesting to see having done a missed approach in an A321 back in January.
Also I watched an Austrian registered MD-83 (OE-LMM or OE-LMN) arrive on either Wednesday or Thursday, and when I was returning home it was still sat there. I have now learnt it had a double engine flameout and a yaw damper failure, not good!

Return Flight
Flight Number: TCX306L
Aircraft: Boeing 757-300
ETA: 19:50 (departed around 20:35)
Gate 5. Given seat 15E, but sat in 15F

After all day waiting around the hotel me and my friends arrived back at Arrecife Airport. It was around 17:20 and there was only a small set of queues for the return flight home. We joined the shortest and pretty soon the queue for our flight was out of the door. This evening there was a range of flights departing including:

-a Martinair A320 for Fuerteventura and Amsterdam
-First Choice 757-200 for Birmingham
-CSA A321 for Dublin
-Thomas Cook flight to Manchester
-MyTravel A321 flight to Manchester
-GB Airways A321 for LGW
-Astraeus 757-200 to Cork
-Gir Jet 757-200 to Madrid

Our luggage was all over weight allowances (by only a couple of kilos) and collectively came to 55KG (our allowance was 45KG collective. So we had to pay 9€ per Kilo, which was going to hurt in the wallet. However the friendly check-in agent knocked off 5 of those kilos we had to pay for and so the ACE-Handling agent only made us pay 45€, which was a relief. Security was a breeze and I decided to look around the ACE departure lounge. Its a big long hallway with a good range of shops, and also has a Burger King and Pizza Hut, great stuff! I bought some CK One for myself and some Baileys for my mum and then went to check out the ACE movements. The red MD-83 was still sat parallel with the terminal, the binter 734 was in and an FCA 752 for BHX was sat on Gate 1. I had been watching the MAN departure board at the hotels internet café and I knew we would be delayed, and sure enough the screen broke the bad news…TCX306L Manchester DELAYED! Not really surprising. After a while, a CSA A321 arrived from/to Dublin, pretty wierd seeing them doing charters. We went BK and bought some sort of chicken strips as we were all very hungry. I checked time (19:15) and realised the aircraft was on approach, I had wanted to video it landing and see where it parked. So I ran to the viewing deck and waited for it to turn up. My friends joined me too and soon enough the aircraft passed over the airport on approach. A good ten minutes later the aircraft had touched down, and I was very happy to see it was G-JMAA this time, RESULT!!! Two different 757-300s in a week! It went and sat at Gate 5 and so I decided to jump the gun and joined another family in the boarding queue, even before they had called us to! I dont really like queueing to get on planes.

My friends had sat down, I asked them to join me but they decided not to, and ended up further down a growing queue. The family in front of me were the kind who saw every day as a day of fun, a wife permanently on hyper mode singing songs to the children, a husband that seemed ok and a guy who would be everyone’s friend and children who seemed to not cause much nuisance. At least they werent screaming, which is always a plus point. At around 20:00 they called us forward after boarding some wheelchair passengers. And I was soon heading down the airbridge and onboard G-JMAA, I was the second passenger (after the cheesy happy family) to board.
I sat down in the window seat and saw a lovely Rolls Royce RB-211 next to me, now I was excited, as I knew these engines can make some noise!
Soon my friends had sat down and we watched some more arrivals, G-OAVB from Cork, G-SMTJ from Manchester (interesting seeing that after flying on it in January) and the Gadair 752 from Madrid, which looked stunning!

We soon pushed back and headed down to runway 03, and entered the runway without hesitation. [I decided to video the take-off and it should be on YouTube soon.] The RR spooled up next to me for a second or two and then take-off power was applied, making the buzz-saw noise we all love the 757 for. A smooth rotation over the city and a quick bank to the right to avoid the mountains. Then the aircraft levelled up and the engines groaned as power was reduced and then they went silent, making only a quiet whining noise, which was very peculiar as we were only around 10,000feet up. The engines kept increasing in power and then back down again. I was very puzzled by this, and my friends didnt thank me for telling them it wasnt quite normal (to me) for the engines to do this. After we cleared Lanzarote power was increased again and we continued our climb.
Nothing much happened from then on, Eragon was the movie home and I didnt fancy that. So I wrote some trip notes, my friends interested and probably puzzled by what I was doing. I had a right moron behind me who kicked my seat and pulled my window blind down, and it wasnt a kid, but a very dumb man. I said out very loud “I have an ******** behind me”, my friends telling me to keep my voice down. Meals were served when we were over Portugal, Sausage and Mash this time. I gave mine to my friend and I just ate mine and my friends’ bread rolls. A cup of tea and a cup of Orange juice was nice enough to keep me going.
The bay of biscay was bumpy, and the seatbelt sign went on for 5minutes, but it didnt last long. Soon the co-pilot was telling us of our approach to Manchester. We were over Exeter Airport and would continue up towards Liverpool, then fly parallel with MAN and then approach back, landing on the second runway this time. I assumed he meant 05R….not so!

We descended through cloud and soon the lights were visible of what I assumed was North Manchester and Bolton (I saw 4 red beacons and so I thought it must be winter hill) but it seems to have been a transmitter near Macclesfield, as our approach had taken us over Cheshire. We made a sharp left turn and the engines roared for a second. Then I could see a railway bridge near Brinnington that goes over the M60 and I realised we had approached over Marple and Hyde. I saw Stockport Tesco Extra and the famous viaduct and bus station. Then the Co-Op pyramid and then Cheadle.

I knew now we were on final approach and soon enough the airport came into view. Passed the airport pub and T3 and touched down at 00:35 on runway 23L! Which was a new thing for me! We headed down to the loop at the start of 05R and I could see a TOM 738 that was waiting inside it. We waited for a while for another aircraft to land (which had an emergency on board) and then back-tracked 05R, getting a nice view up it whilst turning back onto 05R, the dumb guy behind me said “this runway must be miles long”, but it was only one of many dumb things he said and did during the flight and he just generally talked like a complete wazok. We crossed an unlit 05L with red warning markers and passed the AVP, with Concorde all lit up. Lots of aircraft were in MAN overnight, mainly charter stuff (FCA, TOM, XL, MON, TCX). We came around and sat onto Gate 26, where my holiday began a week before. By this time it was 00:55 and everyone was eager to get off and get home. It took ages for luggage to come through, and we didnt get it till 01:25! Eventually I was off and I went down the ramp in the car and passed G-JMAA sat at Gate 26 as I was driven off into the misty morning…