It is possible to get into something aviation related. You may have seen in the ‘CAT 3 airports’ thread that I mentioned how I’m doing work experience up the Stansted control tower. I simply wrote to them, waited (a long time) for a reply. Then they said I would have to go to an interview to see if I had a genuine interest, which I did and then i got accepted. At the same time I also got accepted for work experience with Airfield operations doing things such as runway inspections, but had to decide which one I’d prefer! Went for the ATC of course, with STN’s tower being the tallest in the UK 😀

I was just walking into Air Cadets when i saw the Thai plane come over low on finals for STN at about 7:05pm yesterday evening. I was struck to see it, took me about 5 looks before I could believe it wasn’t GSS or NCA Cargo! Also soon after was a Bmi A320, G-MIDA. There must have been some reason for the diversions, I know there were lots of storms in the London area last night?

I would be up for any meets in the London area (LHR, LGW, LTN maybe?) if I am around, and certainly STN! Please if anyone is down in this area I will be more than happy to show you around etc aslong as I’m off school or not on holiday!

Well this sounds good, but any news (or ideas) when they might start their cadet sponsorship scheme again? I don’t think they’ve run it for years, and I think they’re running into trouble with the amount of pilots retiring and not enough coming up the line to replace them. Cadet sponsorship maybe one of the only ways I’ll be able to get into the right-hand seat, and hopeully it picks up again with all the numerous airlines that offered such schemes before 9/11.

STN has a large variety of cargo. Air France used to have their weekly 742F service bringing flowers from the Caribbean, we have FedEx here as their main UK base carrying anything that needs to be taken. Then we have Emerald and Streamline aviation with their cargo flights, UPS taking mail and other such items to America, and then TNT and Channel Express taking things accross Europe. Another one is Global Supply Systems operating their 744F’s in a joint operation with BA and Atlas Air. I’ll try and find cargo figures for STN…..

Britannia: When you take the photos so big that gives you lots of room to crop. You could probably crop that Lufthansa one to make it feel most of the frame, and still keep it at about 800×600 pixels.

RIPConcorde: No, as far as I know West Air Sweden are still going strong, if anyone can confirm? They convert their own ATP’s to the cargo version, and I think these are the only Cargo ATP’s in the world.

How big (in pixels) do you take your photos Britannia?