EI-DWL - Boeing 737-8AS/W - Ryanair - by Rob Smith	EI-EFC - Boeing 737-8AS/W - Ryanair - by Rob Smith	EI-EKA - Boeing 737-8AS/W - Ryanair - by Rob Smith	EI-ELA - Airbus A330-302 - Aer Lingus - by Rob Smith	EI-ESR - Boeing 737-8AS/W - Ryanair - by Rob Smith
N156DL - Boeing 767-3P6/ER - Delta Airlines - by Rob Smith	N723TW - Boeing 757-231/W - Delta Airlines - by Rob Smith	TC-JPO - Airbus A320-232 - THY Turkish Airlines - by Rob Smith

I'd long been planning on searching out some heavily reduced flights once the January sales began, but unfortunately the only reasonably-priced ones were Ryanair to Dublin.

I mentioned it the advertisement for the trip that it's probably a little cheesy nowadays compared to two-three years ago, but we still decided it would be worth it. The aim for me was to catch up with a few Ryanairs, while Rob wanted a lot of good photos, yet I was left very surprised by how much Ryanair have reduced the base to the point where Aer Lingus now easily outnumber them. In fact, I was surprised at how quiet Dublin was as a whole.

So it was up at 3am then off to pick Rob up before heading to Leeds/Bradford where we arrived at 5.30am, we passed through the airport like sh*t through a Goose as we went straight to security and once through there we were immediately called to board. EI-EKS was our aircraft.

The outbound flight left dead on time at 6.45am, making up 10 minutes en-route, arriving in Dublin at 7.30am. First order of business was the biz ramp, the only opportunity to nail this is between leaving the aircraft and passing through security. We then made the long walk to the popular mound that overlooks the runway with the intention of staying here until the light started to fade, but despite weather on the day being fine, the wet grass that you can't avoid walking on got into our shoes and the temperature was dropping making this spot very uncomfortable. We decided to stay until we'd built up a reasonable collection of photos then we made our way back to the terminal using the courtesy bus that goes from the long stay car park located behind the mound.

Once inside the terminal we passed back through security and then had a bite to eat before making our way to a gate to log from. It wasn't too long before LoCo syndrome kicked in - the same few aircraft returning time and time again. There was still enough new stuff to keep us interested mind and once the light started to fade I opted for a well-earned kip while Rob continued logging. Once dark we tried to log but it proved impossible so we just made notes of anything that wasn't Aer Arann, Aer Lingus, Cityjet or Ryanair with the intention of tracing it later. We then mooched around the shops for a bit and had a look at the Aer Lingus pier before making our way to our gate where we soon discovered the b*st*rds had sent us the same aircraft to go back in despite having a near 300-strong fleet! A nice (or in a way not-so-nice) surprise was just before we boarded seeing a Spanair Airbus A321 EC-HPM pass by, presumably to enter storage and it was a little eerie to see it pass by also-stored-following-impounding Malev Boeing 737 HA-LOI.

The return flight was again smooth but time was getting on so the departure was very rushed, we left five minutes late at 9.20pm but again we made back some time and arrived in Leeds dead on time at 10.10pm. A confusing moment occurred during roll-out at Leeds when the passenger next to me very genuinely asked another passenger, "Where are we going?" to much laughter from the passengers in the immediate area!

We didn't make too much of an effort to log what was left at Leeds and just made our way back.

Leeds/Bradford Int'l
13-02-2012 0530 - 0645

Dublin
13-02-2012 0730 - 2120

Leeds/Bradford Int'l
13-02-2012 2210-2215

Thanks for reading if you got this far.

Chris Photos

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