After checking out of our hotel in Chester, we headed for Liverpool via the Wirral and the Mersey Tunnel. At 1015 we arrived at the old Speke Terminal. This is a must for spotters visiting Liverpool. The old airport opened on 1 July 1933, but as the passenger traffic through Liverpool grew, particularly on flights across the Irish Sea, new facilities on the ground were needed. This lead to the construction of an Art Deco-style terminal and two hangars. These buildings were taken into use in the late 1930s, and remained in use until 1986.

We're now on the apron in front of the old Speke terminal. Nowadays, the building houses the Marriott Hotel - Liverpool South. It is wonderful to see the magnificent restoration work Marriott has done to the building. They have even given many of the rooms have names of old and famous aircraft.

The tower in all its glory.

BAe Jetstream 41 G-JMAC is parked in front of the terminal. The aircraft was built in 1992 and was registered G-JMAD on 12 June 1992 (c/n 41004). I guess to hold on to MAD wasn't best.
If you want to read more about the aircraft, try this link to the Jetstream Club.

The spotter-mobile on the ramp at Speke Airport. It was time to load up and get some compressed air for our cameras.

Just across the road from the old Speke terminal (tower can be seen to the right), is a large shopping centre where we hoped we could get some compressed air, but they didn't open until 11:00 and it was now 10:30. We returned to our spotter-mobile and headed into Liverpool. We finally stumbled across a Jessops in a side street to Church Street. Lo and behold - our problems were solved. No “ferry cross the Mersey”, but we drove out of town along Albert Docks.

Arriving at the new terminal, we spotted this Emerald Airways ATP. G-JEMC is one of five ATPs they have bought from Air Wisconsin and Biman Bangladesh Airlines. It is the first showing their new colours. G-JEMC is used on their five times daily passenger service between Liverpool and Isle of Man.

Yoko Ono unveiled this bronze statue of John Lennon in March 2002 completed the rebranding the airport. The rebranding process started in July 2001 when it was renamed Liverpool John Lennon Airport. The new logo for the airport is the famous self portrait by John Lennon and with the slogan above us only sky - a quote from Imagine. The artist behind the bronze statue is local sculptor Tom Murphy. You will find it along the walkway overlooking the departure area.

12:26 VLM Fokker 50 OO-VLX parked on the apron in front of the terminal. The photo is taken from the windows of Burger King on level 3 of the terminal.
The quality of the photos you get there is poor because the windows are both coloured, full of greasy finger marks on the inside and very dirty on the outside.

12:59 First aircraft to land is a Ryanair 737-200 arriving from Dublin as FR444. The vegetation south of the parking area blocks the further view out along the centre line, and it's very difficult to plan ahead for that perfect shot of arriving aircraft. This first photo was of the type "shoot from the hip".

13:02 Helicentre Blackpool Schweizer 269C-1 G-BZXJ.

13:04 Liverpool Flying School Piper PA-28-180 Cherokee G-LFSG on short final.

13:13 Another aircraft from Cheshire Air Training Services, Reims Cessna F172N Skyhawk.
Notice the black cat painted on the tail, not an aircraft for suspicious people, I guess.
Or perhaps it’s a variant of the Cheshire Cat?

13:19 Another Liverpool Flying School aircaft making its rounds, Piper PA-38-112 Tomahawk G-LFSH.

13:22 - 13:24 Here comes G-IGOP, as I did at the terminal, an easyJet 737-36N. The aircraft came to the fleet with the Go merger, and had earlier a pink skirt and pink engines with "go ahead" as the slogan.

13:30 Belgian Air Force 15 Luchttransport/Transport Aèrien Wing ERJ Legacy (ERJ-145) CE-03