Pic(k) of the week 45: One year of flying the Airbus A380

November 05, 2013

Pic(k) of the week 45: One year of flying the Airbus A380

Last week, it was exactly one year, that I did my first flight on the Airbus A380. Because this was a significant event in my Airline career, week 45 of my 2012 Pic(k) of the week series, was also dedicated to this.

One year later, I've learned a whole lot more about the aircraft; especially from the moment I've started instructing again, about 9 months ago. The saying, "the best way of learning, is teaching" really holds a lot of truth!

Over the last year, she has taken me to all over the world and has not disappointed me since! Yes, my last flight a week ago was a bit eventful, but I unfortunately I'm not able to comment any further on the subject here…

I've taken a fair amount of A380 images over the last 12 months. The best ones can be found in my Airline gallery. A few days ago, probably as the result of some jet lag , I was up very early and decided to take my Nikon D800 for a spin. About 30 min after getting out of bed, I was pointing with my 70-200 lens skywards at my favourite Dubai airport spotting site.

Even though I have some head-on images of landing A380's, I had not been able to photograph the +500 pax Super-jumbo taking off, head on.

The image below of the aircraft with its gear fully retracted, is the exact look I was after. Some of the colours have been desaturated, while others have been left in.

On a side-note, this happened to be the same aircraft (A6-EAG) I flew up and down to Jeddah the next day, on my yearly line-check...