SPOTTING IN TENERIFE
I have just returned from 2 weeks in Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands. Its been 4 years since I last visited and thought I would bring spotting matters up to date. The holiday was a "Non spotting" affair but I had booked the second week at Golf del sur which is very close to Tenerife South Airport so thing naturally progressed!!.
The journey started with JET2 from Newcastle onboard G-LSAD (the white one) and we set of on the new "Tango" oceanic route initially routing to Dublin, Cork, Porto Santo and then Tenerife. 4 hours and 20 minutes later we bounced into Tenerife South and I picked up the hire car and drove off to a resort on the west coast for a week, Friday is the UK changeover day and its very busy at TFS. It is also Russian day and on arrival I saw a Transaero B742 and a VIM B752, other than that it was mainly UK charter stuff. I will now describe the best places for spotting -
Tenerife South
This is the main airport situated east of the main holiday areas of Los Cristianos and Playa de las americas. To get the best out of the area you need a car and keep away from the terminal as you cannot see anything until you check in. The best areas are at the threshold of Runway 08 which is in use 95% of the time, leave the motorway and head for "Los Abrigos" and if its morning then drive into the village and drive through the residential area and out towards the threshold. There are white "AENA" concrete bollards to guide you and you can park off the road and wait for the action, this area is good till 2pm. The afternoon spot is reached by again leaving the motorway heading for Los Abrigos but take a left turn for "Atigo" and follow the winding road until you see the white "Aena" bollards. Turn right and head for the runway threshold past the quarry and you can again park up off the road. Photos are excellent here, please see - CLICK HERE
Days to avoid are Wednesday and Thursday which are very quiet, Winter is the busiest time of year as the whole of Scandinavia moves to the Canaries!! Traffic has moved towards schedules and the low cost airlines such as Air Berlin, HLX, Ryanair and Easyjet all visit daily. Futura, Spanair, Air Europa and LTE have based aircraft here and Binter visit 3 times daily using ATR72s.but you will see most other european charters over a week. Biz movements are quiet other than ambulance flights and cargo tends to go from the north airport.
Seen during my visit were -
OE-HPZ BD100 (Based), N611JM Gulf4, OO-LFS Lear45, CN-TJB Lear45, D-BIKA Falcon 2000
Interesting Airliners were - EC-JIB A320 flying for LTE in full "VW Tiguan" colours, LN-NOD B738 Norwegian, D-AHIJ A319 Hamburg Airlines, TF-JXD B738 JETX/Primera, G-XLAR B739 XL, HA-LKC B738 Hungarian Travel Service, RA73008 B752 VIM. Transaero used a B742 on 2 occasions.
Here is the area for the afternoon -
The runway is to the right
Shots are also viable once you have checked in as the departure lounge overlooks the whole apron -
Tenerife North
This was the only airport in Tenerife until the late 70's but tourism dictated that the coach ride to the south of nearly an hour meant TFS was built. To get there follow the TF1 motorway towards Santa Cruz, join the link motorway to La Laguna and you are there. It reminds me of LBA as its at 1800ft in mountainous terrain and suffers from a low cloudbase at times. Turn left before the airport itself and head for "El Teide" which is Spain's highest mountain at 12500ft, you pass under the approach lights and turn parallel with the runway, you will see some shops on your left which gives a view above the runway. See Photos - CLICK HERE
Traffic is brisk and made up of schedules to the mainland with Spanair, Air Europa and Iberia along with the inter island flights of Binter Canarias and Islas both using ATR72s, these come in waves and you can sometimes see 4 or 5 together on approach. Landing shots are excellent here especially in the afternoon. I drove to the terminal but it offers no views athough I found the old Viscount "Gate Guard" parked on a car park as there is much expansion here.
Iberia use A340s on the morning Madrid service and Cygnus use a mixture of DC8 and 757 freighters in the morning.
This is the spot -
I was there from 2pm till 4pm and bagged 11 Binter and 3 Islas ATR72s, so its well worth the drive!!
Thanks for getting this far!!
Dave