East Midlands 21 July 2020 Richard Bowater
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My first visit to
East Midlands this year wasn’t enough to see examples of all of
the visiting cargo aircraft. A second trip was planned which
included different times of day and different days.
Tuesday was the
decided start day arriving about mid day just in time to see the
departure of an ABX Air 763F then slowly picking off a number of
arriving ASL 734Fs, which unfortunately are mostly white. Then
there’s only Jet 2 and Ryanair 738s until the start of the
evening cargo rush.
This time I managed
to see more active 763Fs including the regular UPS, Star Air and
new for me CargoJet of Canada. A change in the 737s saw Bluebird
Iceland being replaced by CarGoJet of Bulgaria on the Iceland
flight. The weather forecast was wrong again and the supposed
clear sky became overcast thus making the light terrible for
photography. I retreated to the viewing area from the vantage
point mid way along the runway on the airport trail and sat and
watched the evening’s activity. If only we had midnight sun,
like some northern European countries. After dark the aircraft
were A300s, A330 and plenty of 737s of DHL, ASL and Atlantic
West.
The nightly Swift Air
734F EC-MIE looked nice in full colours, a second CarGoJet
Bulgaria appeared in an Enter Air scheme which it wore before
its cargo conversion and Loganairs new ATR-72F also looked good.
The Amerijet appears late on a Tuesday unlike Mondays when it
arrives about eight, this produced N347CM in full colours and
was fitted with winglets which were acquired during its
passenger flying life.
The CargoLogic 737s
turned up on perfect time, followed by the based ASL ATR-72s
return and more ASL 737s. Then by mid morning the cargo flights
dry up leaving a bit of a wait for the Wednesday ABX Air 763F
which was wearing DHL colours.
This time the trip
produced fifty five cargo aircraft the planned ASL 752 didn’t
appear and the FedEx 752 that doesn’t seem to move was a
different aircraft by the morning! Different days produce more
aircraft i.e. Sundays see an Air Bridge 747-800F.