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Got MAD ... and went to TEV

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tangoscar 12 Feb 20, 21:48Post
Last weekend my son and I went on a little spotting trip to Spain. The destination mainly was picked because Iberia (Express) offered cheap tickets - round trip DUS-MAD-DUS for EUR 100. The schedule worked just great, we flew out Saturday morning and returned Sunday night ... yes, we did despite the storm. A good friend joined us flying in from DUB. Both of the flights were scheduled to land at MAD at 10:00 am, and he beat us by like 30 seconds touching down on 32L while we were on short final for 32R after an uneventful flight.

Iberia Express is a no-frills product, so any beverages and snacks are available for purchase only. Regular cattle class seat pitch is kind of cramped (28"), so I decided to pay a little extra for emergency exit seats to save my son (6'1") and myself (6'2") from developing a thrombosis. The planned aircraft was an A320, booked seats were 14EF. So far so good, however, while on our way to DUS we found out that they had changed the leg to an A321 (EC-JGS). On a positive note, exit seats were automatically reassigned and they have ginormous legroom on the A321. Only downside was that we now had 26DE, so no window seat, but there isn't really a window in that row on the A321 anyway.

Picked up the rental car and after a couple of hours spotting at MAD - mainly because we wanted to catch the Plus Ultra A346 - we took the 3-hour drive to Teruel Airport (TEV), as my friend called it, the "Victorville of Europe". If you love to roam around aircraft bone yards, you should definitely pay this place a visit. Currently, around 70 aircraft are stored there, 90%-ish are wide-bodies including a good bunch of 4-holers. We logged 14 A340-300/-500/-600 and eight 747s, some of them obviously being on death row. Other notable finds were two Avianca A318s, an Iberia Mad Dog and an UTair-ex Continental 762. The area along the fence is very accessible and no one cared that we were taking photos through and over the fence.






After spending about two hours at TEV we returned to MAD late at night. Sunday we spent all day at various locations around MAD. Weather, unfortunately, was not so great, foggy in the mornings and overcast pretty much the entire trip, but at least it didn't rain.




Things appeared to get a little exciting when we heard about this major storm system moving in from the UK, which eventually hit Germany late Sunday afternoon and would hang around for a couple of days. Our flight was due to depart MAD at 07:50 pm, arriving at DUS at 10:35 pm, which was supposed to be near the peak time of the storm. In the meantime, most flights from various locations all across Europe scheduled to arrive at DUS between 06:00 pm-ish and 10:30 pm had already been cancelled. Nonetheless we took off - this time as planned on an A320 (EC-LXQ) - and it was a smooth flight until we started our descent into DUS. The approach was somewhat bumpy, but not as bad as expected. We made it on the first try and only skidded a bit when hitting the brakes. The Laudamotion ahead of us had to go around twice. The drive back home afterwards was far worse than the flight.

To sum it up, we had a great trip. Great value for money and nothing to complain about with Iberia.
JLAmber (netAirspace ATC & Founding Member) 12 Feb 20, 22:49Post
Looks like a great little trip. Some sad sights at TEV , lots of four engined types that will never fly again.
A million great ideas...
TNCB 13 Feb 20, 08:30Post
Nice shots and report! How many mm's is usually needed to get photos? Is the sun direction any good?
miamiair (netAirspace FAA) 13 Feb 20, 11:53Post
There certainly are some gems there. These are from 2018. Another Tarmac Aerosave location.
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And let's get one thing straight. There's a big difference between a pilot and an aviator. One is a technician; the other is an artist in love with flight. — E. B. Jeppesen
miamiair (netAirspace FAA) 13 Feb 20, 11:57Post
A few more. They try to recycle the airplane in the most eco-friendly manner possible. Sad when you see airframes you've flown on come in. The EY777LR came in on Tuesday, got covered up, and Thursday morning they took all the coverings off and it left before we got there on Friday.
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And let's get one thing straight. There's a big difference between a pilot and an aviator. One is a technician; the other is an artist in love with flight. — E. B. Jeppesen
Lucas (netAirspace ATC & Founding Member) 13 Feb 20, 19:23Post
Very interested read. I had never heard of Teruel Airport!
JLAmber (netAirspace ATC & Founding Member) 13 Feb 20, 19:40Post
Lucas wrote:Very interested read. I had never heard of Teruel Airport!


TEV is pretty unique in that it's an airport purpose-built for MRO & storage operations. It was a source of much derision when it first opened but is now the go-to European boneyard. Definitely worth a visit if you're in the area.
A million great ideas...
tangoscar 13 Feb 20, 22:17Post
TNCB wrote:Nice shots and report! How many mm's is usually needed to get photos? Is the sun direction any good?


Thanks!

I mainly used my 24-120 and 100-400 lenses (full frame), so in case you have a crop sensor camera a 70-300 lens will do the job. For a few shots I switched to a 150-600 lens.

UTair 762: 85 mm
Wamos 744: 92 mm
TAP A343: 65 mm
CES A346: 360 mm - for the UTair I needed 500 mm from that location

You can directly access and walk along roughly 80% of the perimeter fence, so any time of the day is good. On the north side (shot of the UTair 762) and west side (CES A346) the road is right next to the fence, and on the south side (Wamos 744) is a dirt road, which goes all along the fence there. The TAP A343 was sitting on the tarmac between the scrap business facility and the runway, the shot was taken from the parking lot next to the airport authorities building.
 

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