Civilian Aviation

I went to Stansted yesterday evening to see the Russian visitors which brought Mr Putin and his entourage to London for the day, the light was excellent at times but cr*p at others so the quality varies somewhat. As well as the Russians I’ve included other visitors including the Slovak Government Tu154 which I managed to get pics of in decent light this time,
first of all the Russians, an IL96, 2 IL62s and the Il 76 that had been around for a week or so:
the Il96 RA96016 was first to depart




RA-86561 was the first of the IL62s to leave






Followed a bit later by RA-86466





And then as the light was leaving the ’76 made a very noisy departure
Looks like Ryanair have a new addition to their fleet:


And finally after sitting on the runway getting up to full power for what seemed ages off she went making loads of noise and plenty of smoke - I think half of Essex must have heard it, last week I noticed the old Aeroflot titles painted out but still showing a bit but couldn’t believe how dirty it was , looked like it had been parked on a farm for a few months still a nice sight though







Now some of the Others

Continuing the russian theme a bit, Tu154 OM-BYO came and went




A couple of 747s arrived







And some FedEx movements









Thomas Cook are operating this A320 (YL-LCI) in a mainly white scheme, a somewhat rocky landing



And finally some of the other regulars:

Great shots :-) superb collection of russian hardware ;-)

What more could you ask for?! Beautiful golden light and some belting movements! Cracking set of shots!

Spirit of Kitty Hawk wrote:What more could you ask for?! Beautiful golden light and some belting movements! Cracking set of shots!

many thanks. As you can see the light changed a lot, it was very dull when the '96 took off and you can see the difference compared to the '62s. It got very dark out to the west for a while - i got a lovely (though i say it myself) cloud shot - it was a military cloud so can't post a piccie of it here I had loads of shots in the dull weather that i didnt consider posting but the 76 & 96 were too uncommon not to post them

By the time the '76 departed it was getting quite dark and there were about 20 of us on the mound and I joked with the others taking photos that we should all set our cameras to flash and when it departed count down 3, 2, 1 then all flash together (in the nicest possible way) to get some light on the subject - I took the Il 76 at 1/160th to get enough light on the subject. The only other ones at that speed were the prop jobs to get some prop blur.

Thanks again for the kind comments

Wonderful thread Andy, that Il-76 looks terrible !

did the thomas cook plane have ryanair pilots in !!! a fab set there

Looks like you got some great traffic there!!

Nice one!
Rob