Very cool pictures.
Is the Caravelle any closer to being airworthy yet? That was very good of the airport to lend them a gate for the day.

Good to see my DC-8 is doing well. She doesn’t half get about 🙂 Fab pics.

Unfortunately the Caravelle will never fly again. According to the club’s latest newsletter, the new ridiculous insurance regulations put in force by the EU has effectively shut the door to this project. There aren’t enough sponsors as it is. Furthermore the history of the spare parts can’t be tracked fully as the aircraft was operated by the Swedish Air Force under military regulations 1972-1999. Thus, the necessary D check will never take place. However the club now aims to make this the most beautiful Caravelle on display anywhere in the world, and the Swedish CAA at Arlanda has offered to help as much as possible with a spot to place it at for both passengers and visitors to see.

This year there will be no staatsloterij logojet. Also, the new livery has been postponed till the end of the year. The livery that had been chosen was finally dropped after all since it was too “shouty”. Not seen the proposal myself though.

How did you find the spots? Had a local showing you around? The spot on the Kaagbaan is easy enough to find, but the spot at the Polderbaan is a bit harder.

Thanks for great info! I saw one all-white Transavia 737s wearing the logo seen on their website – the ‘new’ logo which looks awful. Is this the logo the new, postponed, livery will use? If so, hope it’s postponed indefinetly…

There is a Norwegian spotters’ site which has a section on Schiphol: http://www.plane-spotter.com/Reports/AMS_trip_2003.htm, including a very good PDF file with a map, frequencies and general hints for great spotting. That’s where I found the Polderbaan site, but to get there we had to rent a Volkswagen Lupo – an interesting experience in many ways… 😀 Will come to AMS later this summer.

Thanks everyone. Yes, the airfield is still in use. I saw several helicopters and some Cessnas when I was there. There is a DC-7C at Las Palmas airport as well, in considerably better shape and used by the airport authority AENA for training. I saw it parked next to an Air UK F27 which apparently has been donated to the airport for some reason…

Add to that Britannia Nordic, also owned by TUI, based in Sweden while the original Britannia has been raped of their name and pride. One big mess without any sanity.

Top brass and marketing morons never learn, ’cause they constantly move around and never look back. Thanks for the nice memories, Hapag-Lloyd, now I’ll just look past you as I do with Condor and British Airways…