Intense plane (and bird!)spotting in Barcelona

It is becoming a sort of tradition this time of the year, as the weather gets warmer and sunnier, to visit one my favourite airports for a session of planespotting.

First surprise was to find out, upon arrival, that precisely this morning the airport had changed its usual runway configuration and all aircraft were coming in to land from the South. This basically rendered useless the spotting platform located right underneath the main runway nothern approach.

Conveniently enough, there is another observation platform close to the beach, a bit further away (hence the grainy quality of some pictures, since they were taken at the camera's maximum range), but with decent views of the departing planes.

Even from afar, the Airbus A380 is always an impressive sight!

This is the morning flight from Dubai. Emirates has a second daily flight that arrives to Barcelona in the evening.

Barcelona has become an important destination for Turkish Airlines, that flies some of its frequencies with wide-body aircraft, such as this Airbus A330nAA

An increasingly rare sight: this may be one of the last Fokker 100s operating in Europe! 

Another interesting aircraft operated by Portugalia, an Embraer ERJ-145

Beautiful Air Europa Embraer E190

And now that we are at it...another Embraer, an E190 operated by Jetair Fly, TUI's Belgian subsidiary

Lufthansa has ambitious plans for its low cost subsidiary, Eurowings

Straight from Sao Paulo, TAM's Boeing 767

Evelop's creative livery. This Spanish airline is based in Palma de Mallorca and operates in charter and leisure markets

Elegant Scandinavian Boeing 737-800

This being Barcelona, we saw, of course, lots of Vueling aircraft

One of the great things about Barcelona airport is that it is located next to a long beach and several areas of natural interest.

Planespotters mingle with bird-watchers...and often they are the same people, as it is easy to switch your camera from the sky to the numerous ponds and marshes that surround the airport, that are teeming with other sorts of birds!

Bird-watching plaform within sight of the airport terminal and control tower. Sometimes it's difficult to know where to look at!

The other type of birds you can spot around Barcelona airport