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Stansted is a good airport if
you want Ryanair and Easyjet, it also has other low cost
visitors such as Air Berlin, Niki, Sky Europe and Germanwings
and is one of the main Cargo airports of London where you will
find regular night operations by UPS, Fedex, TNT, Global
Supply Systems and Asiana Cargo, MAS Kargo have also been
known to drop in...
Stansted is also the choice of the new first class
Trans-Atlantic services from EOS and Maxjet, the larger
executive aircraft visiting London also come to STN.
 Spotting
is not so easy unless you have a car, this map shows the one
main spot where people go, it is adjacent to the runway and
every movement passes by you, it is best in the afternoon when
the sun has passed above you and is dropping behind you, can
be difficult in the morning.
Basically, when you come off the motorway for Stansted
Airport, you come to a roundabout with the "BAA Stansted" sign
on it, carry on straight ahead and head toward the business
park which is sign posted, When you reach here its worth
driving in to see whats parked up, as its the best chance you
will get...this is the blue line on the map...
Carry on following the yellow lines, continueing along the
road - its pretty simle, you eventually end up back on
yourself along a straight road with some trees on your right,
through the trees you may see the airport perimeter fence..
There may also be cars parked around, park up here and your
there, walk through a gap in the trees and your looking
straight across at the airport..
If your a photographer however, your not above the fence, so
walk along the fence towards the fire training and business
park and when you emerge from the are you see a big open field
with a raised mound in it, photographers choose this spot.
Standing on this mound gets you above the fence and its right
about where aircraft rotate (whichever runway is in use)
Because Stansted is a BAA airport, official viewing areas are
completely non exisitent! Airport security are regularly
shooting up and down the perimeter roads but no body seems to
mind you being here...
Driving up to the terminal you may get a glimpse of some of
the cargo aircraft parked up on your left, but photography is
useless here and if you stop you will be bothered!
The mound, if it is the one I'm
thinking of is now closed off. However once you are through
the trees you just need to walk left until you are happy
that aircraft are clearing the fence on after rotation.
Don't think the tea-time Fed-Ex MD-11 will take a long run,
and you will not get a photo as I did. In fact it goes to
Paris, empty I guess, and your problem will be it rotates so
quick you end up with an underneath shot !!
If you walk left you come to a
crash gate. The road on the other side of the bushes/trees
turns left and drops into the valley. However if you
continue to follow the track by the airfield boundary fence,
it eventually leaves the fence and drops away. Just here is
a very small mound of dumped earth. Its just big enough for
one photographer, but gets you high enough to get landing
shots without the fence in the way if they are landing on
23. This summer there was a very active ant hill near by !!!
update : 29.10.07 by Dave
Wooler
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