Last vacation day at NUE

Monday, June 24 was the last day of my summer vacation. Unsurprisingly, I spent it capturing airplanes at NUE. I actually didn't plan to spend the entire day there: I just wanted to catch the Atlas Air Boeing 767-300ER. And since the weather was good, I decide to pack a lunch to enjoy it al fresco on the Besucherhügel.

High-resolution JPEG and RAW

Somehow the day turned out to be more interesting than I expected. Firstly, a Lufthansa City Airbus A320neo made a visit to NUE. The new member of the Lufthansa Group is not not yet ferrying passengers, so by the looks of it, this was a test flight. The airplane left NUE an hour or so later, without any passengers onboard. For a change, the RWY10 was used for departures, which allowed for capturing airplanes when they were rotating. As the temperatures hovered above the 30°C mark, heat haze was a bit of a problem, though.

The Atlas Air machine arrived with a significant delay. And after I was done photographing it, I trekked to a natural reserve area not far from Besucherhügel to have my repast.

I decided to hang around the airport a little bit longer to capture Boeing 737-85R from Corendon featuring the 1. FC Nürnberg (Nuremberg's football club) livery. To surprise of no one it was delayed for almost 1.5 hours, so I'd been slowly roasted under the hot sun on the rooftop of the car parking building for longer than I planned.

High-resolution JPEG and RAW

But my sufferings were rewarded by an unannounced arrival of a Finnish Air Force Learjet 35A which is a rather rare guest in our neck of the woods. As an additional bonus, I also captured two Condor machines with their catchy yellow and red stripes.

After five hours of aircraft photography, it was time for me to head back home. And even though I was quite tired, it was a perfect day to wrap up my vacation.