Penang Planespotting #002 - 16 April 2016 Part 1

It has been a long time since the Penang Planespotting #xxx was published. Time to continue the series.

Throughout the past few days, there have been rather weird movements of incoming aircraft around Penang airport. The one the caught my eye was this FedEx that was circling the Northern end of Penang Island before landing on runway 22. 

A few days later, I managed to catch a glimpse of Korean Air Cargo coming in low, also using runway 22 (coming in from the North). So this was my target. Getting the touchdown moment of the Korean Air Cargo 747.

It landed at 7am that morning, too early for any good photo capture anyway. 

Airbus Standoff

There seemed to be some maintenance work being carried out on Taxiway Alpha, just around the point of the acute turn of the High Speed Taxiway. This mandated all widebodies (those bigger than A320s / B737s) to land from runway 22 to allow them easy access to the terminal. Narrowbodies could land on runway 04 (from the South), but had to make a U-turn, and backtrack along the length of the runway. Lots of aircraft had to made several circles before landing.

After the AirAsia cleared the runway, it was time for Dragonair to depart.

Dragonair A330-343 (B-LBD)

Thai Airways A320-232 (HS-TXB)

Many aircraft had to wait for their turn to takeoff due to the runway maintenance. You'd usually get an aircraft or two holding short of the runway. But during this time, you could see up to 4 aircraft waiting. This one came in on 22.

Air HongKong A300F4-605R (B-LDE)

The next one got my by surprise. Looks like this one had been used for cloud seeding operations at other places before. Could be the one that participated in the Cloud Seeding operation around Penang.

Cessna 340A (N98560)

AirAsia A320-216 (9M-AQI)

The next one shows one of the aircraft making a nice U-Turn on the runway. They will slow down along the runway until the High-Speed Taxiway exit, before making the turn. Some turned left, some turned right. Either way, they had to backtrack along the runway until the terminal taxiway.

Malindo B737-8GP (9M-LNQ)

Usual operations will see some ATRs and A320s with Sharklets turn onto the runway about a quarter down the runway. But due to the need for other narrowbodies to use it to access the apron, they needed to go all the way to the end.

Malindo Air ATR72-600 (9M-LMK)

These two cargo aircraft came back-to-back. Great to see them so close.

FedEx MD-11F (N594FE)

FedEx B767-3S2F(ER) (N118FE)

Tags:

penang planespotting sslee runway 22

fedex 767 penang sslee wmkp

cloud seeding cessna 340

backtrack runway