Tweet29-10-2011 om 22:06 by Sueli Brodin

This is Tim, Sueli's son. I wrote a few months ago about my passion for airplanes and now I would like to write about what happened afterwards.

Soon after the publication of my story, I was very surprised and happy to receive an invitation to visit Maastricht Aachen Airport.



I went  to the airport at the end of the summer holidays with my parents and my best friend Thomas who is also a big fan of airplanes.

The man who had sent us the invitation was called Mark Keulers and he came to greet us in the main hall. He said that he was going to give us a tour of the whole airport.



Mark first took us to the control tower and there we met Finn and Sonny, the two air traffic controllers who were working that day in the tower.



Finn and Sonny were very nice and we asked them many questions about their  job. They showed us the dots representing airplanes on their radar screens and we were very lucky because we saw two plane landings and one take-off while we were on top of the tower.

The view over the runway was very impressive. I also liked hearing Finn speaking with the pilots in English. He looked very serious when he spoke in the microphone and he explained that the work of an air traffic controller requires a lot of concentration. That's why he needs to take a short break every couple of hours.

Sonny and Finn said that they had studied for four years to become air traffic controllers. They also said it was important to be good at maths and physics.



We said good bye to Finn and Sonny and then Mark told us that we had to pass through a metal detector and put yellow visitors' jackets on before going to the airport platform. Security is very important in an airport!



Thomas and I immediately recognised a Ryanair 737-800 on the platform. We saw the passengers come out of the plane and walk towards the arrival hall. After a short moment, new passengers started boarding the plane and soon afterwards the plane took off again. My mother was surprised to see that the airplane had not stayed more than 30 minutes in Maastricht but Mark explained that this was normal because Ryanair had a very strict time schedule and an efficient procedure.



My father took many photographs during our visit. This is a picture of the nose of the Ryanair Boeing 737-800. I think that the two technicians to the left are recharging the battery of the plane.



One of the most interesting part of the visit was when Mark took us to see the area of the platform where airplanes can be repaired.



Sometimes, the airplanes are too old and too damaged to be repaired so they are used for safety exercises instead. I didn't know that this type of training happened at Maastricht Aachen Airport. Mark said that the firemen would set the planes on fire during the exercises and that their task was to run through the smoke and the flames and rescue fake passengers from the plane.



The man in the photograph who is talking to Thomas and me has a very important job at the airport because he is in charge of everything that happens on the platforms. In case of an accident or emergency, he is the person who must press on the alarm button to warn the firetrucks to jump into action.

He also explained that birds can be very dangerous for airplanes and he showed us the different methods that can be used to scare them away from the runways. He made us hear what the gas explosions sounded like and showed us how the laser stick worked.



Our next stop was at the cargo platform. This is the engine of a Boeing 747-400F, the biggest plane that could be seen at Maastricht Aachen Airport at the time. Two weeks ago, a Boeing 747-800F Cargolux landed for the first time at the airport and that's the biggest Boeing airplane!



The Boeing 747-400F cargo plane was being refilled with kerosine and we were able to get very close to it. My father took a picture of its wheels. Aren't they huge?

Thomas and I had never seen a Boeing 747-400F from so close and we were very impressed and couldn't stop smiling. Mark could see that we were very happy and this made him smile too.

Our guided tour lasted for almost three hours and we enjoyed every second of it. We finally had to say good bye to Mark and thanked him very much for the great day at the airport!



In the meantime, my interest for airplanes continues. When my mother told my sisters and me that we were going to spend the autumn holiday with my grandparents and aunt in Paris, I asked her if we could also go and look at the planes at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport. But my aunt had another suggestion for us: she said that there was an Air and Space Museum at Le Bourget airport with a lot of airplanes and spacecraft and that it would be an ideal tip for a day out.



That's where we went today and it was another special day for me. We saw the Concorde - actually two of them! - and were even able to walk inside the airplane. I was amazed to see that the Concorde is even bigger in reality than I had thought.



And just as we left the Concorde hangar to take a look at the planes parked outside, I quickly grabbed my mother's camera because I suddenly spotted an Airbus A380 high up in the sky. That's the biggest passengers airplane in the world! It was flying very far away in the distance but I am absolutely positive that it was an A380!

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