Thank for this warm welcome!

Today, we’ve got EVA A330 flying. Unfortunately, no pics, and the weather is getting bad, we expect storms tonight…

I was able to see the first A330 for KLM. Still few weeks to wait till first flight…

Let’s look back at the stars of the airfield of the previous weeks : the first brand new Etihad A330 (previous ones were second hand aircrafts I believe) and the great Dragonair A330 “Anniversary”.

This Dragonair special livery was designed by Tania Willis (http://www.taniawillis.com), from Hong-Kong. One side symbolizes Hong-Kong, the other side symbolizes China.

Both are now delivered.

I indeed own a 100-400IS lens.

There are a lot of spotting places around the airport so it is quite easy to find a good angle in the morning or in the afternoon.
At the end, Toulouse-Blagnac is quite a small airport. Don’t expect heavies. Regional links and shuttles (Paris/Orly or Paris/CDG) are CRJs, ERJs or A319/320. We have charter traffic in summer and in winter (ski charter from the UK).
As for the Airbus Test Flights, yes it is very variable, you could have an average of 2 flights in the morning and 2 or 3 flights in the afternoon. Some days you are lucky, as it was the case when Sam Chui came here for the A380 maiden flight. He travelled from Sydney to Toulouse via LA, arrived in Blagnac, and was able to see the first Thai A345 flying, A343 T900 Test Bed, 4 Belugas in a row, etc etc… Lucky guy! :rolleyes:
The only big thing we regularly have is Antonov-124 from Polet or Volga Dnepr, carrying RR engines from Derby/East-Midlands or satellites for Alcatel.

Living in Toulouse is surely as exciting as living near Boeing Field or Seattle. Except we just have more sunny days! 😀
We also have the almost daily opportunity to see Belugas, A346, A318 and A380 flying.
So here is a small gallery of the tests and logitics aircrafts of Airbus.
Note that Beluga #2 (F-GSTB) has been repainted in new Airbus colors last month. The complete fleet is to be repainted in the following months…

The last one shows the mighty Trent900 test bed under the wing of Airbus’ first A340 (MSN001, A340-300, F-WWAI). The aircraft is currently in FTB2 campaign, completing tests already performed in summer last year.

To be continued…