Quote:
Originally Posted by mmxylorider For those of you in the Los Angeles area, Santa Monica airport has a pretty neat observation area for people to watch planes in motion. This airport does not cater to the big jets, but recreational single/double piston engine 4-8 seater and small jets like bombardier/gulfstream usage can be seen. There are some private charter running scheduled services and one can watch significant activity during morning hours on Saturday. |
Thanks for sharing. Just to add for the plane spotter enthusiast:
Not wanting to sound to nationalistic, but Amsterdam airport is probably one of the best, if not the best place to watch a hugely busy international commercial airport.
Here a google map showing most of the spotter places:
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/vi...c.kiu0HqS5EhtI
All are well accessible and on some of the larger ones, you might even find little mobile cafeteria where you can get a snack and a drink.
The largest one has an actual McDonalds:
http://www.mcdonaldsrestaurant.nl/sc...schiphol-noord and also here on the official Amsterdam website:
http://www.schiphol.nl/Travellers/Sh...ipholWhere.htm
So you can take the whole family; kids eating their happy-meals, while you sip a cup of undefined muck that McDonalds universally flogs as coffee. But you will have planes taking off / landing every three minutes only a few hundred meters from where you are sitting. And just about any commercial plane comes to Amsterdam airport. So you will see anything from a Fokker 50 to an Airbus 380 or Boeing 747-400 and anything and everything in between.
And it gets even better at the terminal. Here in India only passengers are allowed inside the terminal building. On most western type of airports, everybody is allowed in the terminal to drop off or pick up passengers.
Amsterdam airport has a huge general area, called the Plaza.
http://www.schiphol.nl/Travellers/Sh...ipholPlaza.htm
More shops then I've seen in any Indian mall. Also there are several restaurants and bars, open to the public where you can overlook the terminal area.
There is also a huge panorama terrace, open to the general public, on top of the terminal building where you can go outside and watch the planes taxing to and from the gates, getting fuelled, loaded up with luggage etc.
http://www.schiphol.nl/Travellers/Sh...amaTerrace.htm http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel...race-BR-1.html
Apparently, the have also put a real Fokker 50 on the terrace recently, which again is open all free of charge to the public. I haven't seen this yet, as I've been outside the Netherlands for more then 6 years now. So these days I only do Amsterdam Airport as a passenger.
So, apart from a very busy international hub airport, Amsterdam-Schiphol airport is a huge tourist attraction. Every weekend it attracts thousands of people, whole families, who come and enjoy walking around the airport, do a bit of shopping, eat and drink, whilst getting very close up to the planes.
And for the real aviation enthusiast, only a 10 minutes drive away from Amsterdam Airport, the best aviation store in the world as well:
http://www.aviationmegastore.com/inf...e64744a7cb7e0f
What these guys don't stock or have on display is simply not worth having. Everything on aviation, ready made models, model kits, books, magazine, flight simulation, charts, navigation equipment etc. etc
I never spend less then two hours in this shop when I visit and it's only a thirty minutes drive from where we lived (near the Hague), so I go there often!
Enjoy!!
Jeroen