Three productive days in FRA

No prizes for guessing where I spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday morning. Yeah, FRA again. What can I say? It's my favorite place, and it's not going to change any time soon. The forecast on Aktuelle Betriebsrichtung und Betriebsrichtungsprognose promised several days of uninterrupted 07 East runway operation, meaning that RWY 07C was used for departures, offering a chance to capture airplanes that are usually out of reach for yours truly. Plus, of course, a different perspective.

I arrived to Frankfurt on Thursday at around 13:00 with only 10-minute delay, which was better that usual by Deutsche Bahn's abysmally low standards, and I headed straight to Zeppelinheim. The weather wasn't all that fantastic. It wasn't cold, but strong westerly winds meant that it felt really chilly. A gray soup replaced the skies, and the light was non-existent. Nevertheless, I spend a couple of hours and captured quite a few interesting airplanes.

Next morning, I got up early, wolfed down breakfast, and dashed back to the Zeppelinheim. On my way there, I noticed that there were no airplanes taking off. And after waiting on the A5 overpass for around 45 minutes without a single departure, a bright idea occurred to me: I should check the news. To my dismay, I learned that the German Air Traffic Control had technical issues that brought FRA to a standstill for more that an hour. I trudged back to the hotel, had lunch and a quick nap, and returned to Zeppelinheim a couple of hours later.

Full-resolution JPEG and RAW

Because the entire departure schedule was thrown into disarray, I did miss a couple of airplanes, but I also lucked out, and captured a handful of interesting aircraft. The highlights included a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner from All Nippon Airways wearing the Star Wars R2-D2 livery (reg. JA873A) and Airbus A330-200F from Sichuan Airlines (reg. B-308L).

Full-resolution JPEG and RAW

Even though I was bone-tired when I got back to the hotel, I still found strength to go out and do a bit of late evening aircraft photography.

On Saturday, the gray weather finally relented and gave way to a modicum of sunshine and warmth. I spent a rather uneventful couple of hours on the A5 overpass before heading back home.

All in all, it has been a very productive trip, although I'm not sure how much I'm going to enjoy working through more than 2000 RAW files.