Again I was the lucky one or, put in other words, I won the race for the window seat and, based on the experience from the morning flight concentrated on what was going on outside the aeroplane. The 1,400+ km flight from to London City overflies the southern part of Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and then straight in over southern parts of London before entering the arrival pattern at LCY. Due to the easterly wind, we landed from the west on Runway 08.

This Stockholm-London service is unique in an SAS context. First of all, it is flown twice daily on weekdays with a morning and an evening flight. The target group is clearly the Swedish business community and tailored for a day trip to the London financial district. The travel pattern is full morning flights to London City in the morning and from London City in the evening. If you are flying against the general flow, you can get some very good deals on a ticket to and from London. The added bonus is that don't need to wait in long lines for your passport to be checked and fight your way to the baggage carousel only to find you’re in for an endless wait as is the case at both Heathrow and Stansted. Ten to fifteen minutes after deplaning, suitcase in hand you walk out the door ready to explore London - either by taking the Docklands Light Rail in to the city or meander your way through the congested city centre traffic in a rental car. If you take the car option, be sure to bring with you your own moving map GPS to find the way. We did and were treated to a marvellous sightseeing tour along the Thames and through the city centre on our way to the Wembley area in London NW. Driving over Trafalgar Square and up Regent Street to Oxford Circus shortly after eight in the evening was a blast!

Now back to our flight.

  


Our Avro RJ70 being pushed back from gate F29
       
 


We're taxiing on Yankee heading for the Yankee Juliet entrance to runway 19R. In the background you can see the large SAS maintenance hangar and the tail in the front to the left of the hangar is the former Bergen Aviation/Transwede Caravelle SE-DEC.


A last check of the safety features for our aircraft before take off revealed its origin.The RJ70 had earlier flown for Azzurra Air in Italy.


We're in the air and in the background we can see the airport's surface water treatment plant behind the faring.


The pilots are cleaning up the wing on our climb out from Arlanda


Almost at cruise level somewhere over southern Sweden


About to leave Swedish air space - you can see parts of Denmark to left of the engine

Over western parts of Denmark, the North Sea and the Netherlands all we saw was scattered clouds.
So we continue with photos from the descent into London City Airport.


Somewhere over southern London


This one I do know - the Battersea Power Station. Need I mention Pink Floyd and a flying pig?


And on the final part of the approach brought us straight over the Millennium Dome in Greenwich.


Still space to be developed in the Docklands?


After the final steep approach (5.5°) in to London City Airport, we have landed ...


... and there was runway left to spare ...


... now it was just backtrack to the terminal. The airport does not have any taxiways along the runway except for a small area at the eastern end of the runway which can hold up to three waiting aircraft.


It didn't take long to get out of the aircraft, and on the outside it was busy times - the middle of the late afternoon rush hours. We can see a VLM Fokker 50 cleared to land (hanging in the air just above the tail of OO-VLM) and to the right a Dash-8-300 from Cirrus is waiting for its take-off clearance.


At the neighbooring gate the VLM Fokker 50 OO-VLJ is already boarding - having arrived only 15 minutes earlier than our flight


Further down along the apron we can see two Air France/Cityjet BAe 146-200 (one just about to make the famous LCY turn), one Swiss Avro RJ100, one SAS Q400 (from Copenhagen) and another VLM Fokker 50.


ScotAirways - Dornier 328 - G-BYMK - MSN 3062 - CB0769 heading for Edinburgh


Bye bye for this time COQ


Scandinavian Airlines - DHC-8-Q400 - LN-RDJ - MSN 4010 - SK1532 boarded and preparing for engine start

Unfortuneately, I didn't get many photo shots done at the airport (two to be precise), as I was busy connecting to the Internet. I had made wonderful printouts of the hotels and museums (complete with postcode for easy programming of the Garmin GPS). It really does help to bring them. They are of absolutely no use left behind on the printer. However, we do take our planning seriously and had all details posted on a private area of PSC. A pound coin and an Internet kiosk and our problems were easily solved.


One of many bizjets visiting LCY during a day. This Embraer Legacy (bizjet edition of Embraer 135) OK-GGG arrived from Prague.


Air France/Cityjet - BAe 146-200 - EI-CMS - MSN E2044 - WX5119 departing to Dublin


Air France/Cityjet - BAe 146-200 - EI-CWB - MSN E2051


Euromanx - DHC-8-311 - OE-HBC - MSN 533 - 3W810 departing for Isle of Man


These houses are on the opposite side of the docks and in between is the runway. I would think that the upper floors over there would be perfect for spotters.

Four men in their prime with baggage to boot – well, the boot of the Peugeot 407 hire car just wasn't big enough. A quick sprint back to the AVIS counter for our designated driver, and we had a six-seat KIA MPV with heavily tinted windows.


The last photo I took is of the LCY terminal - taken as I jumped in to the 2P seat of our KIA.
 
       
  2007-07-07