MAN May 28th – Footballl charters

Manchester Airport had its busiest day ever yesterday with all the charters for the Champions League final which was held at old trafford.
I had a trip to the viewing park along with thousands of others, heres a little report from a great day:

Having found out the CPL final was to be held at Old Trafford and hearing there was to be a lot of aircraft bringing fans, the planning started months before the actual day. Everybody was praying for two non English teams in the final so we could see more aircraft and after Man Utd went out we had our wish.

During many posts on every website on the net it became clear there would be a LOT of people there and may be problems parking around the southside as the Police were to be strict, so the week before Myself and another photographer Paul Arnold decided in to book in to the Moat House Hotel. This saved me a 2 hour journey and gave us a good parking spot.
After seeing the weather (very poor at the time) and realising they were going to use the 24’s, we decided our spot for the day would be the viewing park.
As it was expected to be busy we got up early at 4am, had breakfast in the Hotel at 0445 and were in the que for the viewing park by 0520 and not anywhere near the front either!
It was planned to open the park at 0630 but as there were so many cars, the park actually open at about 0545. We headed over to one of the mounds and got in a good position for a day of photography. Two double decker buses arrived shortly afterwards and we decided to pay the £10 for the day on top of one of those to get us better views over the fence,

The park continued to fill up and at about 0730 they were starting to turn people away, the car park was also packed and the police stopped more going on here because of safety fears!
We had a good spot for the day and some very nice aircraft arrived, some of the highlights were:

East African Safari 763 – operating for Lauda Italy
Alitalia MD-11
Italian Premier’s A319CJ
Boeing Business Jet 737
Volare and Volareweb A320/1 and A330
Austrian A340
Star Airlines A330/A320
Air Dolomiti CRJ
Gandalf Airlines 328JET
Air Europe 763
Neos 738
Azzurra Air 737/ RJ’s
Air Mediterrane A321
Plus loads of Eurofly A320’s and a few Blue Panarama 737’s

The weather got better and the sun caused a few problems but we were still able to get over 500 pictures each before deciding to leave just before 1800 after they removed the bus. We went over to the southside in the hope of getting something going out, but never did, got some nice shots of the normal stuff though.
We had planned to try some evening, night time shots so had to stay at MAN till about 2200 when it got dark.
After having a pizza and heading back we only found that the tripod was slightly small and the lights were orange meaning the pics look bad anyway. After dropping Paul off, I heading home and arrived about 0020.

One very, very long day after which I was completely knackered but very much worth it, lots of fantastic aircraft and some good photos.

Sorry about it being so long, me going on a little bit, but here are a few pics from the day:

Alitalia MD-11