Tweet21-05-2011 om 13:46 by Sueli Brodin

Hello, this is Tim. I am Sueli’s son and I am 11 years old.

Today my mother wanted to write about my passion for planes and airports but I thought I'd better do it myself.



The first thing I do when I wake up every morning is to check the latest updates on the Dutch Aviation website: http://luchtvaartnieuws.nl/

In the weekend I also check the Maastricht Aachen airport website to see which planes are going to land or take off.

If I see an interesting plane coming from far away, I even know how to trace its flight route online.



One day I followed a flight from Florida to Maastricht on the computer and actually saw the plane when it flew over the city!



What I like the most is to go to the airport and watch the planes as they land. I always bring my camera and take a lot of pictures.

I prefer to see landings because they last longer and are more spectacular than takeoffs.

The bigger the plane the better it is.



I like passengers planes the best because they look much nicer than cargo planes, especially when they are Boeings 737, because that’s my favourite plane.

Everyday there are a few passenger planes Boeings 737 arriving from Greece, Italy, Spain or Germany.





The biggest plane I have seen land at Maastricht Aachen airport was a Boeing 747-400F. It was a cargo plane that had arrived from Kuala Lumpur.



I can see the planes on their way to and from the airport from my house and my school. I like that a lot.

And almost every weekend I ask my father to go to the airport and watch the planes. We live very close to the airport so it only takes us five minutes by car or 20 minutes by bike to get there.

There is a special deck for spotters at the airport where people can stand and look at the planes.



The glass protection wall is still a bit too high for me so my father has bought me a folding step ladder that I can stand on and look over the wall.



In my room at home I have built a big Lego airport, with four runways, six gates, seven planes and two helicopters, a control tower, one big passenger terminal and one air cargo terminal and lots of Lego figures, cars, trucks and equipment.



I spend a lot of time playing there with my two sisters and my friends. Last week, I even built a second airport in my sister’s room and now things are really starting to get fun.

There is a TV programme on National Geographic Channel that I like watching. It is called Air Crash Investigation and it tells the stories of plane crashes and near-disasters all over the world. It is a very interesting programme because it teaches me a lot about airplanes and aviation.



My best friend shares my passion for planes and we both like playing Flight Simulator on the computer. Yesterday for example my friend flew a Boeing 737-800 from Schiphol airport in Amsterdam to Kevlavik airport in Iceland for 3,5 hours! And I flew the same plane from Findel airport in Luxembourg to Maastricht Aachen airport in just 15 minutes. It was a bit frightening because I had to fly through a storm and the plane started shaking and at one point my speed controller stopped working for a few minutes.



I am going to do a presentation at school about the Royal Dutch Airlines KLM which is my favourite airline company and the oldest airline company still flying under its original name. It merged with Air France in 2004, and together they are the biggest airline company in the world. It’s cool to think that they are just like me, Dutch and French!

I was in a plane once but I don’t remember anything because I was only two years old at the time. I would like to fly again but it depends on my parents and the problem is that my father is afraid of flying after a bad experience.

I am still trying to convince them to take me on a flight from Maastricht to Amsterdam. I read in my Aviation news website that a company called Wings of Maastricht will start operating a new service this summer which will take only 40 minutes and cost only EUR 30 for a one-way ticket. I think it would be a very nice way to go to Amsterdam!



Or as far as I am concerned, just spend a day at Schiphol airport.

In any case, I am really happy to live close to an airport.

Comments

Leave a reply