East Midlands Late 80s

Hello

My pictures taken at East Midlands the other week seem to have gone down well, so I thought that these photos taken during the latter half of the 1980s may be of interest.

I first ventured out to an airport with a camera in 1985, and spent much of the next five years at East Midlands. Things were very quiet then, but there was always something of interest.

British Midland were the main based airline. They operated two Short 360s, which were used on long discontinued routes from East Midlands and Birmingham to Heathrow. With one being deployed at each airport, the only place that they could be seen together was Heathrow. However, one Sunday, when the frequency of services was much reduced, G-BMHY came over to do a couple of circuits while ‘HX waited between flights:-

G-BMHX by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

British Midland Viscounts were also frequent visitors, being scheduled to operate services to Glasgow and Jersey, although they often ventured from EMA to other airports as well. Here G-AZNA arrives following a flight from Glasgow in 1988:-

G-AZNA by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

Note the unique Jet Commander F-BXAS parked in the background.

One of the other based airlines was Orion, who were later absorbed into Britannia. Their claim to fame was that they were the first European airline to operate the 737-300 – in this June 1988 photo G-BLKB (the first aircraft I flew on) is starting a flight to Reus while G-BLKD has just landed from Faro:-

G-BLKB by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

The airport had a thriving maintenance business which attracted many interesting aircraft. This 1988 photo shows N67AB, an Air Berlin 737, being towed from the hangars to pick up its crew before heading back to Berlin:-

N67AB by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

While Air Berlin is now a huge airline, back then they had just this one aircraft which they operated on charter flights from Berlin. At the time, only US, British and French aircraft were allowed to operate from West Berlin, hence the registration.

There were regular flights to Yugoslavia as well. Back in 1988 when the following photo was taken it was hard to imagine that Yugoslavia was about to implode and that in a few year’s time Adria would be the national airline of Slovenia, but here DC-9 YU-AHJ arrives at the terminal at the end of a flight from Pula:-

YU-AHJ by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

Note the Aberdeen Airways Gulfstream 1 parked up behind the DC-9 – this was a short lived airline that provided a service between East Midlands and Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

There are some interesting aircraft in the background of this photo from October 1986 as well. Hiding behind Air Atlantique Dakota G-AMSV is British Midland 1-11 G-WLAD – this was leased from Airways International Cymru for the summer of 1986 after which it went to Manx for their Isle of Man to Heathrow service – and Elan Argosy G-APRL right at the back.

G-AMSV by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

In the summer of 1986, Cal Air operated a weekly DC-10 service to Alicante late on a Wednesday evening. The aircraft obviously liked the Midlands since it left base at Gatwick for Alicante in the morning, operating round trips to Birmingham and then East Midlands before returning home to Gatwick from Spain:-

G-BJZD by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

This is an interesting aircraft – not only was it the -10 version, but it was delivered to Laker and is still flying (with FedEx) today.

The DC-10 wasn’t the only large aircraft visiting the airport. In May 1987 a local travel agent chartered a Virgin 747 to operate a trip to and from Gatwick. G-VIRG operated the flight – at the time Virgin only had two aircraft:-

G-VIRG by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

And finally, JCB have a long standing presence at the airport. In this 1987 photo, 125 G-GJCB was taxying out at the start of a flight to Cologne/Bonn:-

G-GJCB by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

Hope these photos are of interest.

Regards,

Neil