Luton Olympic Opening Ceremony Flights

Hello

Apologies that these are rather old, but I spent three days at Luton and Stansted back in July to see some of the aircraft bringing in visitors for the Olympic Opening Ceremony.

My trip started at Luton on the Thursday. I arrived at the crash gate at 06:15 to find it absolutely packed with people (a good omen I thought!) and I was lucky enough to get one of the last parking spaces on the access road. After walking back up the road once I had parked, I had set up camp just in time to see A319 VT-IAH arrive to get the day off to a great start:-

VT-IAH by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

Gulfstream N585JC arrived not long after. It was the first ‘proper’ biz jet of the day, and the first of many US registered Gulfs I was to see:-

N585JC by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

It wasn’t all about visitors though – Luton regular G-CEYL departed demonstrating both the power of the Global Express and what a stunning looking aircraft it is in a black colour scheme:-

G-CEYL by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

The Falcon 7X is another good looking biz jet, as N747RL demonstrates:-

N747RL by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

Although the huge numbers of people who by now had spread out all along the perimeter fence were concentrating on the biz jets, there was some interesting movements on the airline side as well – DHL A.300 D-AEAL was still in the livery of JAL, its previous operator:-

D-AEAL by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

The airliner highlight, though, was provided by Delta – A.319 N362NB arrived from Barcelona carrying the US basketball team:-

N362NB by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

There were plenty of aircraft from China – several Gulfstrreams were joined by 737 B-3999:-

B-3999 by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

One of the last aircraft to arrive was Moldovan Learjet ER-LGB – this is the only biz jet on the Moldovan register:-

ER-LGB by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

After a weekend at home, I was up early on the Monday morning and en route to Luton again. It was much quieter today compared to Thursday, albeit it was still busier than usual. Learjet N66SG was one of the first arrivals:-

N66SG by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

The Chinese were still around in force, as demonstrated by Gulfstream B-8098:-

B-8098 by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

Gainjet 757 SX-RFA was the largest corporate movement of my visit:-

SX-RFA by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

M-JIGG had been at Stansted on Friday:-

M-JIGG by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

The rather nattily painted PR-XDY from Brazil:-

PR-XDY by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

Georgian Challenger 850 4L-GAA arrived and departed during my stay:-

4L-GAA by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

I left not long after ‘GAA to bring to an end two very sucessful visits. More photos of the many biz jets and other aircraft I saw can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/indiaecho/

Neil