So where have all the blog posts gone…..

It has been a week like no other week; here I go with the excuses again. Almost every time I have sat down at the PC to actually compose something for No More Dead Pixels one of several things have happened.

1. I have been distracted and never got back to finishing anything
2. Been far too busy visiting Wheatfields Hospice
3. Tiredness (this sounds a lame excuse I know, but busy days take it out on you)
4. A lack of inspiration.

These do sound awful excuses I know. One of the things that crossed my mind last week was my commitment to writing this blog. I raised several questions in my head (to myself) that made me actually think about what I was doing. One of the things about doing a blog like this is to have a reason behind the whole project. I don’t! I don’t have a motive or a reason. No even a passion for writing really. I originally just felt like attaching words to my photography to give an in-depth explanation of my reasoning and ideas when taking a particular image.  This led to topical additions and current news of my interests been inserted here, there and everywhere. Does it work? Who knows…I have had views and comments, lots of them actually and I am yet to receive negative feed back. So I continue.

The last weeks have been spent doing things that have had to take priority in my life, in our lives to be a little more precise. Elaine is part of this too and at the end of the day I have found little time for recreation. Time devoted to loved ones is so precious and time that I will never shun or put off. My photography has been limited and the figures for 2013 are really starting to show. Compared to 2012 I am a long way behind. Current total for 2013 is 4647 RAW files in five months, compared to 2012 this is far short of the 7977 done then. So what is the problem? Like I mentioned above, time is a major factor. Cost is another, trips here, there and everywhere are expensive and are currently on a back burner. Weather is probably the number one reason, we havent had what you might call a wonderful Spring have we. The West of the Pennines seem to have faired a little better than the East but that s just the way the cookie crumbles.

Saturday was particularly nice and after several hours in the back garden with Elaine and our grand children I even managed to feel my forehead starting to burn. As the sun made its way down to the horizon, for the first time in weeks I felt and urge to grab a camera. Racing up to one of my many vantage points I tapped off a hundred images before and after the suns’ disappearance. I was actually happy with the sky that evening, it looked like Spring was here and Summer was around the corner. There was a gorgeous glow fading in to a bluer band of colour. One disadvantage of my selected location is a distinct lack of decent foreground and I was aware of this when I set off.  I knew what I was looking for and a minimalistic horizon with a few trees was going to be ample. Camera RAW offers the photographer a great deal of flexibility at the point of pressing the shutter and also back at the PC at processing stage so in front of the computer I was left with a few possibilities for this particular scene. Panoramas and photo-stitches I absolutely love and find them so much more realistic when it comes to trying to recreate what the human eye can see.

The images were taken with the panorama in mind and they were all shot within a few yards of each other.  I uploaded the results to Flickr today. Oh I forgot to say……We have a new Flickr…mmmm it seems that many are not so impressed. Me…well, I am ok with it and very happy to stay with Flickr, lets accept the change and get on with it. Others however, don’t seem to be seeing it this way but as Im not prepared to re-upload 11K images to another site then so be it. No way. So, whether the slide show facility that allows me to show a preview in WordPress will work remains to be seen….so here goes:-

Thanks for reading, all comments, as usual are very welcome

Bye for now

The Clear, The Cold & The Graduated Sky

It appears that I am a day behind. Having tapped off at least 100 images a day for the last 3 or 4 days a backlog is a certainty. Yes, here I am wanting to blog about yesterday(Friday)  and finding that I am having to include images from as far back as Wednesday and Thursday. So on this note, let me jump back to Wednesday. 05:45 and I hop out of bed to do a “sky-check”. Our bedroom faces west and I have no view to the east unless I wander through the house to look out of another window. If I am truthful I can actually look westwards without getting out of bed as I can see the sky between the blind and curtains. Checking the weather and the cloud base therefore means getting out of bed. A quick totter to the window revealed a clear sky, twinkling stars and an over flying aircraft with a feint vapour trail in the dark but slowly paling sky.

Coming up with new ideas for a decent sunrise shot is getting quite difficult. Yeadon Tarn is a great place for wildlife, water and trees as foreground and even aircraft. As am sure you will appreciate that once you have done something a few times it’s actually nice to have a change and try a different approach. Over 2012 I tried one or two different locations including the airport all of which proved very successful. I discovered that spreading the locations about over the twelve months allows different images as the sunrise location changes throughout the year. The weather and clouds play a huge part of this too with no two days being the same.
After grabbing a quick coffee I proceeded to de-ice the car and headed off to Yeadon Tarn. In an ideal world it would be nice to see it as still as a mill-pond with no wind, an ideal photo opportunity. Rarely does this happen as its location is quite high above sea level. From the area around the Tarn there are good views with great foreground subjects facing in most directions. In particular the view towards the airport runway makes for superb shots of aircraft taking off and landing in to the rising sun. I must admit that I don’t usually go for the aircraft option whilst I am by the tarn as the runway is about 20 feet higher than the level of the tarn making it quite difficult to obtain any decent background detail. I parked my car in the easterly car park and just 20 yards from that spot I am able to get some very pleasing images of the rising sun. Below you will see what I mean about the departing aircraft. I wouldn’t normally include an aircraft in a sunrise where the sky had clouds to reflect colour and give some definition to the image. This morning it didn’t matter, the sky was clear with hardly a cloud. My vision was about to be become reality.

As the sun just started to emerge over the horizon I could hear the noise of jet engines roaring in to life. An aircraft was about to depart. I had my plan laid out. I would capture the aircraft in single frame, then holding the exposure I would capture then same scene to the left and the right of the aircraft. This would enable me to stitch the three images together to make a panorama. The panorama looks more appropriate in a sunrise or sunset shot when there is a lot of plain foreground with no detail. See what you think, the shot is shown above. Or should I say three shots. I actually regard this series of images as one of my best mornings yet.

There was one more image that just screamed out “Take me, Take me”. From my location looking across the water the colour had now turned a bland yellow and was fusing with the now blue spring sky. However looking left just out of the direct sun I noticed a woman walking a dog. As she proceeded towards me I lifted my camera and tapped off a couple of frames. You could see her breath in the cold morning air. Both the dog and its owner cast long black shadows in front of them which made for a lovely composition as she walked the path through the gap in the bushes. The final image is shown below.

Once the sun had risen all chance of getting anything decent whilst facing east in that direction were non existent. It was just way too bright. So I decided to call it a wrap and headed off back home, to the warmth and a chance to sit down with my beautiful wife and have some breakfast.

Thank you for reading. As always, comments welcome.

Kestrel Seven Nine Three cleared to land

I just decided to post this one as a separate entry. I thought it justified a post of its own. Saturday saw me waiting patiently at the airport for a few aviation related images. Having not been up to the airport for a while I was now on a roll as Fridays visit now meant visits on two consecutive days.  Further to my post yesterday called 3 Months of nothing…then 3 days of everything  (which can be viewed here ) I had arranged to meet some friends for a catch up and some happy snapping. The images are all aviation related and probably wouldn’t justify a complete entry on NMDP. This was until we had a visitor.

Kestrels and Red Kites are very common in the skies above West Yorkshire. In particular near the airport as mice and small rodents are in abundance in the grounds of the airport and its restricted areas. These areas are rarely touched by humans and are a great source of food for wild birds and foxes alike. In the early 2000’s Red Kites were released from Harewood House and nearly 100 breeding pairs are in existence in the area. Kestrels are also common sights as I was to find out this cold Easter morning.

I had been talking to friends about the very same subject and one even showed me some recent images on his camera. The subject has arisen after I commented on seeing a Kestrel perched on the fence opposite to where I was parked. I was shown some photos of Red Kites and Kestrels very close to the airport and didn’t think about it too much. I tapped off a couple of frames of the said bird sat on the fence and proceeded to go sit back in my car.

Not unlike me, I slowly dozed off and then totally unaware of what was going on around me nearly missed this very opportunity. To be completely honest, I wasnt even looking. I was sat behind the steering wheel in my car and starring in to space. MY friend John was emphatically gesturing towards me and pointing. For a split second it didn’t sink in and I looked from the passenger side window straight ahead in the direction he was pointing. And there, sat on a recently cut thicket was a young Kestrel observing the airfield like a fledgling plane spotter. After my recent experience with the Peregrine Falcon in Cumbria I learned my lesson. No sudden movements, no knee-jerk reaction. I slowly picked up my camera from the front seat and managed to fill the frame with this beautiful bird. I tapped off a dozen images in a matter of 2 or 3 seconds before Kes turned its head and departed for a more peaceful hunting ground.

This was no consolation for the Peregrine miss in Cumbria last month but it was a good second best….. I will post the complete images from Saturday in a while. In the meantime enjoy my new friend Kes. It’s a shame the lighting wasnt better but you can’t have everything in this not so perfect world can you.

One of my favourite images from last year.

Sunrise | Leeds Bradford Airport – 19th November 2012 – and what a sunrise too…,
a photo by Mark Winterbourne | P H O T O G R A P H Y on Flickr.

This was taken at Cemetery Road, Yeadon looking south-east towards the airport at the rising sun. In November the skies are normally grey but in 2012 we didn’t do too badly. This was probably the best sunrise I saw all year. Capturing the aircraft in the scene made for a combination of my two favourite subjects.

Via Flickr:
A compilation of images, some photostitches and some cropped – Not seen a sunrise as nice as this for many months..some of the images are aviation related as opportunities couldnt be missed. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did shooting them and editing them. Thanks for looking

Two Boeing’s, One Moon & A Sunrise

There are only a few days a year that an image like the one shown above can be obtained with the actual sun behind the tower. The odds are stacked against me as the first week of October is usually poor as in terms of weather. It takes the sun about 4 or 5 days to move from one side to the other at sunrise. The only other opportunity is in early February and once again, at this time of year the weather will either be dull, dark, cloudy and wet or even snowing; or clear sky and no clouds.

Yesterday was very cloudy, but as we all know, the best sunsets and sunrises come with clouds. I chose to stay at home despite glancing out of the window and missed an ideal opportunity. Fridays sunrise was sent packing. This morning I was prepared. I had checked the weather and was ready for a clear frosty morning and the possibility that I would even have to de-ice the car. If you have looked at some of my sunrise images you will know that I like to combine my love of low-light photography with my other passion of aviation. A sunrise shot with a departing aircraft in my opinion, is an awesome spectacle.

It was dark when I left the house at 06:15 and after de-icing the car headed the 1.38 kilometres to my location of choice. From my position near the Cemetery at the end of the runway you have an uninterupted view to the South, South East and East. The weather forecasters had got it spot on this morning; the sky was cloudless apart from half a dozen partially formed vapour trails pointing east; these became apparent at the paling of the sky and glowed orange. The trails were all the early morning inbound flights to mainland Europe from America and Canada and were illuminated at their high altitude by the inconspicuous rising sun.

Aircraft were departing from the airport and creating nice plumes of spray from the wheels on the damp runway. This is always a great opportunity for a couple of shots but with such low light the quality is never going to be high. Based on this information I chose to make the images just like that…Grainy and gravelly. I adjusted the camera controls and made sure the Image stabilizers were switched on and fired off a few frames. My expectations were not high but if you set your standards based on knowledge and experience then you wont be disappointed with your results. There was a Crow sat in the tree next to the cemetery as all I could hear was Caaaw Caaw Caaaw..I looked round and saw it silhouetted against the moon..Great shot went through my mind.. in near darkness, now that’s a challenge. Never to turn down a challenge I lifted the camera and before I could say cheese it was off. I was left with a shot of the trees and the moon. Now, before I decided to drop this image in to the recycle bin looking at it again made me think twice, it had a peculiar feel to it, almost haunting. On that basis I decided edit to the best of my ability and keep it.

The sun slowly began to emerge from behind a mass of distant cloud. An orange glow started to form as the sun rose above the distant bank. It was apparent that the images were going to be nothing special this morning as they were very few flights today and the sky was bland. Time to move on to plan B and think of alternatives.

Plan B in my world, is making something out of very little. The sun had started to rise a lot further to the left of the control tower than I had hoped but this wasnt really unexpected. It was a very dull orange as a result of the atmosphere. We all know that sun light is composed of seven colors — Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red. In the mornings and evenings, when the sun is near the horizon, the rays have to travel about fifty time’s longer path in the atmosphere to reach us than it does in the noon. The dust, smoke and water vapour present in the atmosphere scatter away these colors differently. Violet, indigo and blue are scattered most and red and orange are scattered least. That is why most of these two colors reach our eyes. As a result, the rising and setting sun appears red. I now had the problem of finding suitable foreground for a decent image. When you are stood on high ground this really does present a problem. In the past I have used trees, fences, gravestones (a last resort) and even sheep for silhouettes but today was going to be a none starter. The only item of interest I could use was a bank of trees to the North-East of the terminal building. I even decided to keep the rising sun slap bang centre too… It really was a bland and uninteresting sunrise. I tried to squeeze something out of another shot just down the road with a view over the terminal and control tower but it was fruitless. I will post a link to my images very shortly. Thanks for reading…..Comments welcome as always.

Leeds Bradford Airport | 28th February – Shooting in to the sun grrrr

Leeds Bradford Airport | 28th February – Shooting in to the sun grrrr, a set on Flickr.

The Photos from “The Day of the Faux Pas” .. enjoy !

Bananas ! A Faux Pas

Exactly ! Bananas….that’s how Thursday started at Winterbourne Towers. In a nut shell (or Banana skin in this case) I stole my wifes breakfast. Technically speaking it was a “portion” of her breakfast. Well I didn’t know that she wanted a banana in her porridge did I? Elaine never has banana in her porridge, she always has Granola. Having said that so do I. Anyway, to cut a long story short we’ve not had chance to shop this week yet so supplies have been diminishing slowly with Granola and bananas holding on to the top two on the shopping list chart rundown. This is all beyond my awareness as a male by the way. So Thursday commences like any other Thursday.  I got up slightly early to make sure the sunrise wasn’t up to much after yesterdays faux pas. And also because I had agreed to meet my good friend Lee Pirie aka Yorkshire Flyer to have a morning taking aviation images. Two days in a row I hear you say. Yes, its been a while hasn’t it. Anyway, back to the bananas… I am going to try to defend myself here but it’s probably all in vain as I know I was in the wrong. So here goes…My beautiful wife (that’s not a grovel by the way, that’s what I always call her) Elaine was about to put two bowls of Porridge on the table and as usual I pop a sliced banana in my bowl along with a small handful of  Granola. This morning there was only two very small bananas left in the fruit bowl so I grabbed them both thinking that wasn’t greedy as they were significantly smaller than normal and proceeded to slice them whilst sat at the table.  After Elaine had placed the bowls on the table a brief statement to the words of “Oh there’s no bananas.. err … there were some bananas” came out of her mouth with a comical glance in my direction. Yes, I know, I was guilty. I just didn’t know….. “I’ll just have porridge then shall I” she said….We laugh about things like this, because life is way too short. I did offer Elaine my bowl before you ask.

Despite the Faux Pas at breakfast Elaine was still communicating with me, that was until the second slip up of the day. Elaine has been very fortunate to have been granted a place in this years BUPA Great North Run. My wife is what I would call a serious, casual runner. You know what I mean, she doesn’t go running twice a day and spend 32.5 hours in the gym and she doesn’t need a rub down from a bronzed Italian masseuse afterwards. Elaine runs to a plan; she has a set routine in place for the countdown to the GNR and she’s sticking too it. I have to give her credit as her running is something that has evolved over the last few years and I am extremely proud of her. I never thought I would see someone diagnosed with Asthma run the way she does.  Anyway, before I set off to meet Lee this morning Elaine informed me that she was going running. Now, I don’t have the best memory in the world, but it might have helped if I had listened instead of drifting off in to Winterbourne-Land and thinking of aviation and photography. Half an hour in to my photography I received an email on my phone asking for further details regarding an issue I had with a website I am looking after. Now I knew these details were on my desk at home and instead of being patient and waiting until I actually got home, I did what I always do and ring my beautiful wife, only this time Elaine was 5 miles from home and half way through her training plan.The  only way of answering the phone was to stop her in-ear coach and take my call. Well, I didn’t know did I? I should have listened. I actually rang twice, because she didn’t answer first time which I think made things worse. When I finally did get to talk to her I found out that I wasnt the only one that had rung and I was reliably informed that her morning run was crumbling beneath her feet. I’m truly sorry Elaine……lol 🙂

On to the important bits…. My great friend Lee Pirie, (before you go any further please have a read of Lee’s Bio here because this guy is the salt of the earth and what you would call a real true friend. You know what I mean, someone who would do anything for you and you would do the same back ). Lee loves his photography just like me and with the weather being so nice it was an ideal opportunity to get up to the airport. Lee expressed his desire to get some photographs of this mornings Thomson Holidays flight as it departed. So that was it, the stage was set. Cloudless skies, wall to wall blue and sunshine..yeehaa..a photographers best friend. In winter the sun rises almost in the south-east and this leaves a bit of a problem at Leeds Bradford Airport as it means shooting in to the sun. Who cares !! this is No Rules No Limits Photography … so we did.

Jet2 Boeing 737 departing Leeds Bradford Airport

As you can see from the shot above, the images do require a little bit of attention once you get them in to the computer. But they do give an impression of what it was like. I really like seeing the heat from the back of the engines in shots like this, it really provides atmosphere. We arrived at the end of the runway just in time for the Thomson flight and with the view down the runway looking direct in to the morning sun it was going to be a similar effort to the one above.

Thomson Boeing 757 rotating off runway 32 at Leeds Bradford Airport

It was, in fact it was almost an exact replica. What happened next was very strange and it took a couple of minutes to sink in what had actually happened. As the aircraft passed overhead and climbed in to the Yorkshire sky it started to snow. Seriously. Lee and I looked at each other in disbelief. There were no clouds and the sun was shining.  You could see the snow, feel the snow it was very strange. Before I had time to take it in, it had stopped. The only explanation I could muster up was that it had blown off the wings of the departing 757 and it was actually small ice crystals and not snow. Who knows.

It was a slow morning  at Leeds as aircraft movements were limited but we had a great time and I managed to tap off just under a hundred frames. It was also great to catch up with Lee again, I am just hoping it wont be as long before we get together again. Thanks Lee.

On a final note….Yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today…..

Leeds Bradford Airport | 27th February 2013

Leeds Bradford Airport | 27th February 2013, a set on Flickr.

The photos from todays little “muddy” jaunt to the airport. The last two images are of this evenings gorgeous sunset and afterglow. Thanks for looking

Back in the saddle…

If it hadn’t been so cold this morning then you could have almost imagined it was spring. The sun was making an appearance and I almost questioned whether it would have been worth getting up to see the sunrise. Sadly not quite. After a home breakfast Elaine and I decided to break from routine and nip over to Golden Acre Park . After a very slow wander around the park lake we decided we would stop at the cafe for a quick coffee. No word of a lie, it was really warm sat in the sun and the coffee and scone tasted sublime. Why is that? Why does food always taste different outside? Strange isn’t it. The birds in and around the park are quite tame as they are used to human interaction and it’s quite easy to get good photographs from the cafe terrace. Today I refrained from taking the camera as a stroll was in order. I have had plenty of images from the cafe terrace over the years and today would have been ideal

opportunity for some more of the same. I sat down with Elaine and it was actually warm, the sun was cutting through the air and it actually felt warm. We had a little visitor join us for coffee, a Robin. Not having the camera to hand I missed the opportunity so I have supplied you with a picture from a couple of years ago to give you an idea of the proximity of the birds to the cafe. The coffee and scone were lovely and we headed back to the car for the  short ride home.

Over the winter months my aviation photography has been put on a back burner and apart from a couple of visits down south and last weeks trip to Lincolnshire thats been about it. Adrian texted me this morning informing me of an unusual visitor at the airport. So off we head in beautiful sunshine the 800 metres from home to the airport. The primary reason for todays visit was to see a rather rare visitor to Leeds Bradford Airport. The aircraft in question actually visited the airport on the 14th of this month and I was unavoidably detained elsewhere so missed the opportunity to grab a shot. The aircraft is a United States Army Beech RC-12Q a later variation of the RC-12D. The Beech RC-12D was an adaptation of the business class Super King Air 200B and replaced the earlier version designated as the Beech RU21HA large number of these aircraft were acquired by the US Army and deployed with various elements of the Army Security Agency (ASA) for battlefield electronic reconnaissance. The aircraft are used for COMINT and D/F duties and are equipped with the fully automated ‘Guardrail V’ system which relays data to ground stations via a data-link. The aircraft also carries an ECM system.The latest version, the RC-12Q, introduces a satellite relay function between participating ‘Guardrail’ units. Operating as a ‘mother ship’ to surrounding RC-12P aircraft, the RC-12Q receives data from the other aircraft and, together with it’s own data, relays it via satellite to a ground station where operators remotely control the aircraft’s bank of receivers. The ground operators can also uplink flight path and frequency changes to the aircraft – very little processing is carried out on the aircraft. A crew of 2 pilots flies the aircraft which have frequently been deployed to areas of conflict, such as Kosovo. Around 60 RC-12’s have been delivered to the US Army over the years. A photo of the RC-12Q is shown. I will post a link to todays images shortly.

I managed to grab a handful of images including a shot of a British Airways Airbus departing for Heathrow. The significance is? I hear you ask….is, well…the last time I photographed a British Airways aircraft at Leeds Bradford Airport was the 4th of November 1984 when the inaugural 747 flights used the new runway extension for the first time. You can view a set showing the 747’s on my Flickr pages here . Apart from a few diversions from Manchester over the years I still havent managed to grab a decent shot. So when the service was announced back in June last year I made a point to visit the airport from December onwards and grab a few frames. We havent had the best of weather over the last two months and today was an ideal first opportunity.

As you know, I have a passion for low light photography and sunsets. Whilst sat here typing my blog I can see the setting sun; I stared and just watched the colour emerge from the horizon. It was totally unexpected as it looked way too hazy in the distance for anything spectacular to happen. The glow just became more and more solid orange. With no time to dash off anywhere I resorted to standing at the window and making the best of the foreground to emphasize the colour. I will leave you for today with a shot of the last light of the day. Be safe people. Thanks for reading.

So its finally announced…the mighty 777 is coming to Leeds Bradford Airport

After many months of speculation, it’s finally been announced that Pakistan International Airlines are upgrading the aircraft on the Islamabad-Leeds-Islamabad service. Yes, the giant Boeing 777 will be coming to Leeds Bradford International Airport. Firstly, for those of you not familiar with aircraft sizes, below is a comparison. This is an image by Erwin taken at Amsterdam showing a Boeing 737 (a type currently operated by Jet2.com out of Leeds Bradford Airport) waiting for departure clearance closely followed by a Boeing 777 of Dutch airline KLM.  As you can see that size difference is quite noticeable. The following is the press release from Pakistan International Airlines

Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has announced the introduction of Boeing 777 operations on their non-stop services from Leeds Bradford Airport (LBA) to Islamabad.

This larger aircraft, renowned for its comfort and spaciousness, will offer enhanced cabin facilities providing 35 business class seats and 294 in economy. Passengers in both economy and business class will benefit from increased leg room and a wide selection of refreshments from lights snacks to delicious meals.

Comprehensive in-flight entertainment with the latest films, music and games will also be available. PIA has introduced the Boeing 777 aircraft due to the high demand from travellers in Bradford and the surrounding Yorkshire region who want to fly to and from Pakistan from their local airport. The airline will introduce the aircraft on the existing twice weekly LBA schedule on a Wednesday and Saturday. Tony Hallwood, Commercial Director at LBA, said: “We have been working closely with the local community and businesses to introduce Boeing 777 operations at LBA. “We are now delighted that we have been able to secure this important PIA Boeing 777 flagship service to meet the growing demand from both the Yorkshire region as well as the airline’s customers in Islamabad”

Pakistan International Airline’s Manager at Leeds Bradford, Muhammad Shafique added: “This is excellent news for Leeds Bradford and the entire region that we serve, confirming our confidence in LBA’s status as Yorkshire’s premier international gateway for our customers. With the upgraded facilities available on the Boeing 777 for both business and leisure travel, alongside a competitive fare, we are confident that more Yorkshire passengers will decide to fly with PIA.”.

So there you have it, there has been so many comments around the airport community regarding this, from people saying it will never happen to others stating it wont fit and where will they park it. There are lots of questions that spring to mind, all of which would have been covered in detail by the airline and the airport. In the end, the press release has been issued and I am confident that this would not have happened without confirmation from the airline that they were committed to doing so. A simple check on the PIA website backs up the data on the press release. So, the 13th March 2013 is the first operational due date for the aircraft. I am sure I wont be the only one at the airport that afternoon to witness this arrival.  Below is a size comparison chart showing the Boeing 777 sat next to an Airbus A330 (which I will add has been in LBA before), unfortunately there is no Boeing 747 on this chart. That would have given a better comparison

Just in case it’s too small to read, the 777 is second from the right. A few years ago, Monarch Airlines operated an Airbus A330 in to Leeds on a trooping flight to Germany. The Airbus A330 on the chart is to the left of the 777 and as you can see doesn’t appear to be too much different in size. A photograph I took on the very day the Monarch Airbus A330 came in to Leeds is shown below

So, only time will tell. I firmly believe it will happen. Let’s just wait and see. Thank you for reading, please feel free to add any comments or thoughts…