DUS Jan 2003

First look out of the window early on Saturday morning and it wasn't such a good sight, completely the opposite of Fridays perfect weather with low cloud and spots of rain so it was very dull as you would expect at this time of the year.

Off we went to the Airport and I had a feeling that this was not going to be a great day which is how it turned out, the poor weather continued all morning with quite a lot of mist but most noticeable was the lack of movements compared to Thursday and Friday.

There was some very quiet spells during the day and it would appear that during the winter weekends the Airport closes the second runway and they use only the near one but on a sunny day that would have been okay because you can shoot landers on the near runway with ease which you can't do when both runways are in operation as the nearer one is used for departures whatever way the wind is blowing.

I mostly just stayed inside during the morning and only came out for a few special ones that you see below, definate highlight of the day being a surprise visit of an Air Calin A310.

The Sky Airlines 737 was the only -400 that I saw of theirs on this visit and this was the first time that I have seen a Mahan Air A310 but it left in the same poor conditions that I saw one of their A300's during my last visit in July 2002.

F-OHPX A310
Air Calin
(Dusseldorf 18-1-03).

TC-SKB 737-400
Sky Airlines
(Dusseldorf 18-1-03).

EP-MHI A310
Mahan Air
(Dusseldorf 18-1-03).

I had taken very few shots during the day so was looking forward to the night time ones but as it turned out there were even fewer movements in the evening than during the day so there was not a lot happening to wait for pushing back.

One good thing though was the chance to shoot at night the only Lufthansa A300 that we saw during the 4 days, it had arrived in the afternoon and looked like it was night stopping until Monday morning.

Here below are the night shots from this day:-