Thursday, 29 May 2003

Limited posting

There was no blogging yesterday as I was visiting Manchester airport along with almost every aviation enthusiast in Europe and some from further afield. The occasion was the playing of the final of the Champions' League at Old Trafford resulting in a huge variety of visiting aircraft not normally to be seen in the UK.

I quote from one of the aviation news groups:

Before these groups are jammed by people expressing their thanks for a wonderful day at Manchester, may I on behalf of everyone thank all those involved from the GMP, Airport Authority, TAS, the ATCOS' all other airport workers, and all those who live in the airport vicinity and the pubs for contributing to what had undoubtedly been one of the finest days I have had for longer than I can remember. Special thanks to Steve Saint for his hourly logs, and to Lee Collins for the time he spent keeping us all informed, and to Liam MacManus who threw his garden open to a whole host of photographers. The atmosphere was brilliant, and people of all nationalities enjoyed each others company and a genuine love of things that fly. I met a large number of people I had not seen for a long time, and met many new friends. For all those who were unable to make it you truly missed an experience-the sun even came out!

With a bit of luck my camera has survived hours of intensive use. Sadly, the Blogger posting mechanism is currently barely surviving - probably because of their upgrade to a new system. Hopefully, blogging can return to normal shortly.

(Manchester certainly had a continental atmosphere with some 50,000 Italian fans in town but the pubs still closed at 11pm on Tuesday night. Oh dear, and how unalike Glasgow in 2002.)