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Monarch Airlines Enthusiasts Day (by Chris Smith)

Discovered by accident that Monarch Airlines were holding an enthusiasts day on 16th December which would involve flights from Gatwick to Manchester and back, with hour long tours of both airports as well as the Monarch engineering facility at Manchester.

I attempted to fit it all into one day so it was the first train from Darlington to Kings Cross, before making the short walk to St Pancras for the second train to London Gatwick Airport.

The itinerary for the full day was extremely tight, with little room for delays and with it being well into December I did fear adverse weather would cause no end of problems. Luckily it turned out to be perfectly planned!

I arrived at Gatwick at about 0940ish where I proceeded to the check-in area where I received my boarding pass and headed straight for the gates (we didn't have a gate assigned at this point, so not being familiar with Gatwick I had to pick a random gate in order to find a vantage point, I ended up at gate 21 only to find this was where all the other spotters on the flight had assembled and it turned out to be the best spotting spot available!! We learned at check-in that due to the ops guys having to perform snow-clearing duties the tour of Gatwick had to be cancelled, however the sun was out and no snow was on the ground (although it was snowing when I first arrived), yet Manchester had a covering of snow but they were still able to do the tour, so a little frustrating but never mind. When our aircraft arrived (A330 G-SMAN), we went to the gate it was parked at, as our flight wasn't on the boards with it being a positioning flight, yet no-one turned up and we eventually found out that our gate was at the opposite side of the terminal! (The reason being they bussed us around to the aircraft and this acted as the 'tour'!)

Highlights at Gatwick included the An-148, the BA retro-liveried 757 (what was the point in forking out on that paint job for the sake of just a couple of weeks worth of flying left with BA?!) and the easyJet flying carrot, G-EZUI.

London Gatwick Airport
16-12-2011

The flight was smooth, we flew at FL180 at 400mph, the outside temp was -29 degrees and we were lightly loaded at 140.1 tonnes!! (I dread to think what heavy must be!) Also, knowing most of the pax would have an extensive knowledge of aviation, the pilots gave much more detailed technical info about the flight. Ashamedly, it was my first ever ride on a wide-body aircraft. We departed onto two buses who drove us around the entire airfield, although we didn't quite make it to the main biz ramp. They then took us to the Monarch engineering hangar where we knew Monarch's other A330, G-EOMA, was awaiting inside, just back off lease to Garuda Indonesia and starting a C-check. Also in the hangar was Thomas Cook Boeing 757-200 G-FCLI, also undergoing a C-check. I've been in or near a few GA and Military engineering hangars and there's usually no access at all allowed or very strict rules - with Monarch we were more or less granted the freedom of the hangar! We were in the cargo hold, flight deck and cabin of the A330 despite it being in bits!! Awesome!

Highlights at Manchester included the Air Nostrum CRJ-1000 and the newly-delivered Flybe Embraer 175.

Manchester Airport
16-12-2011

On return from Gatwick fatigue was setting in and aside from a couple of Norwegian Air Shuttle's I didn't put myself out to log much more and there wasn't much to be seen anyway so I made my way home.

A Q&A session was held on the aircraft before we disembarked, someone asked them not to get rid of their 757s and the response was they've recently decided to keep them for another three years.

I offered the trip to a few of the usual suspects and the general response was you'd prefer it to originate at Manchester, so I asked if there was any plans for this or any other trips at all and they said around March they're hoping to drop into Toulouse for an Airbus factory tour as well as visiting Airbus UK at Chester Hawarden (they've already been granted landing permission at Chester, they just need to arrange the dates). Monarch will be offering everyone on today's trip first refusal on any future trips before they go on sale to the general public, so I'll keep you all informed!!

If you've got this far thanks for reading and I hope you've enjoyed it! Photos can be found at the link below (sorry about the poor quality, I can't take a decent photo at the best of times and most had to be through glass). Overall, the day couldn't have gone better, Monarch basically gave us two aircraft to take for a spin and we were treated like royalty by the Monarch staff - a massive thanks to organiser and host Toby Hillier, his team and all the crew!

Photos:

http://dtvaphotos.weebly.com/monarch-enthusiasts-day.html

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