The phenomenon of planespotting is unknown in many countries, but in Ireland it's alive and well. Niamh Hooper meets 'the aerosexuals' of Dublin Airport
Holding their daily vigil, they peer through the southern perimeter fence at Dublin Airport. The cards and vans are neatly backed into the parking area, as they sit with ears cocked intently listening to the two-way conversations on their digital radios. Frayed log books and their bible – Civil Aviation Markings – on the dashboard, they focus binoculars on the aircraft movements on the runway. No, they're not a society of secret agents Welcome to Planet Planespotter.
So enthralled are true spotters by anything to do with the powerful metal birds before them, they tend not to notice other things such as the suspicion they might provoke. In Las Vegas airport security shortly after September 11th, 2001, security staff received a disturbing tip-off from travellers who had spotted a strange man on the roof of a parking garage, his binoculars tracking the runway. Rushing to the scene, the guards confronted British engineer Michael Wright. There was no need to worry, he informed them; he was a "planespotter". Never having encountered an aviation buff devoted to meticulously jotting down aircraft registration numbers, the guards were flummoxed. Bemused, they said he could carry on but requested that he move to some place less conspicuous.
Or, what about the 35-year-old artist returning home to Dublin from London for Christmas three years ago? On a bus bound for the city centre, he spied a gap in the perimeter fence. Excited, he hopped off to get a cherished closer view of the aircraft. But he got too close for the security guards’ liking, however, and was hauled away for questioning.
Planespotters are well used to guffaws of derision and heads shaking in bewilderment. Up there with stamp, coin and football card collectors, this obscure, overwhelmingly male fraternity are the definitive anoraks – passionate to the point of obsession about what is to others mundane. But ask a gathering of 30 planespotters why they do it and you'll get 30 different
answers.
"We’re always asked by people who don’t understand why we do it," seasoned spotter John Bigley from Booterstown, Co Dublin, says a tad defensively. "Why hit and follow a little white ball round a golf course? Every one does something for kicks."
In fact, when any of the spotters were asked why they do it, the question was met with a shrug of the shoulders. "Why does anyone do anything?" they say before justifying their hobby by comparing it with fishing, stamp collecting, playing golf, watching footie or whiling away the hours in the pub. It’s just their thing.
Planespotting is a solo pursuit; spotters hardly exchange a word. They sit side-by-side in cars at Dublin Airport, but each is enjoying his own space. In the past there was a little van that used to go round selling refreshments, but now the spotters come prepared, with flasks of hot coffee and tea and nibbles to keeping them going.
Parked away from the crowd at runway 10/28 for a better vantage point is a 70-year-old hard-core fanatic, Tom, from Glasnevin. "I'm a bit of a loner and if I was talking to people I'd be missing the registrations, the type of plane, where the planes are going to and what's been said on the radio," he says, armed with binoculars, a digital airband radio, a scanner, Civil Aircraft Markings and the all-essential log book in which he scribbles furiously.A loner he may be, but once disturbed he generously shares his world.
"It’s a hobby. I come up to the airport most days. If I don’t, I’m afraid I’ll be missing something. At this stage I know all the pilots by their voices as they talk to the control tower. The skill of the pilots and the control tower are unbelievable, especially in bad weather and the dreaded cross winds. I’d love to have been a pilot, but I missed my chance. And by the way, I have an absolute terror of flying. I’ve never flown."
During his 58 years of planespotting, he remembers fondly the DC3, an old piston engine plane that he says you’d run faster than, and the British Airways three-engine plane, the Trident. "I got interested in flying when I was 12 and would cycle up here on my bike and bring a big raincoat and hide under a hedge, but the radio would get wet and damaged in the rain. I only got a car recently and I can stay here for hours in comfort now. My wife says the only thing that drives me home is my stomach," he chortles. "Maybe she’s right."
Now 58, John Bigley has been spotting and photographing planes for 45 years. His converted attic is a shrine to aviation with about 60,000 photographs filed away in folders. Having flown in more than 100 different types of aircraft, his favourite is the VC3 – the twinengine Dakota. But since 9/11, he has noticed a significant tightening of security which has had an impact on his offbeat hobby.
"Everything was free and easy back in the 1960s and we used to get ramp passes and permission to view the planes, which doesn’t happen anymore. Everything has changed completely – we have as many aircraft flying in a day now as there were in a week 40 years ago."
At the last count, there were 181,000-plus aircraft movements through Dublin Airport in a year. But John doesn’t believe in limiting his hobby to Ireland and in the past few years has gone spotting planes in Paraguay, Chile, Brazil, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Fiji, Helsinki, Rome and Paris. Next on the agenda is a trip to Alaska, Washington and Calgary with five fellow devotees. Their mission: to see the old propeller engine planes – the old Douglas-types – used in the oil fields and fish hauling. "They’re a dying breed and disappearing rapidly."
Stephen Gurr (58), originally from London and now living in Donabate, isn’t bothered with keeping log books. A planespotter for 40 years, he has a collection of 45,000 photos of planes from Russia to the US and all over Europe. "I photograph anything with wings – planes, birds and butterflies. I never photograph people. I think if there were no aircraft I wouldn’t photograph anything," he says. "Some people are interested in cars, trains, buses. Not me. It’s things with wings I like."
As a teenager he’d sit on a roof at Heathrow Airport watching the aircraft. He recalls having to give over his precious vantage point to thousands of screaming girls when The Beatles arrived.
Retired sales rep Larry Curran and his wife Aoife, a retired teacher, are on grandparent duty at the perimeter fence at Dublin Airport on Sunday morning with their young charges, Rory and Daragh Coan. "The kids’ parents are away skiing and we’re here mainly because of how excited Daragh gets when he sees a plane. He’ll be two in July and can’t talk yet but when he sees a plane he goes ga-ga."
Evolving from trainspotting, the quintessential British hobby which first appealed to bored working-class boys looking for some entertainment during the bleak years of the second World War, planespotters are estimated to now number five million in Europe. The most fanatical planespotting nations are the British, Dutch, Germans, Belgians and the Japanese. The French are one of many nations who don’t get it at all: when the film Trainspotting was shown in France, the French had to keep the original title because they had no word for a pastime they’d never heard of.
Neither do the Greeks, evidently, as 14 British and two Dutch planespotters
discovered when they ended up in prison for almost a month in 2001. They had been initially accused of espionage for taking pictures and notes at an air show at amilitary base in Greece. After British diplomats strenuously argued that it was merely a case of cultural misunderstanding, the charges were reduced to illegal information collecting – a misdemeanour. In Ireland, where there are an estimated 10,000 planespotters, the authorities don't tend to get so hot and bothered. Aer Rianta, which manages the State's airports, has no problem with the crew peering through the fence, referring to them as "the anoraks" and "the aerosexuals".
"People have always been and will continue to be fascinated with aircraft. Those who gather at the fences are just intensely into it. But they’re outside the perimeter fence so we don’t have any problem with them," a spokesperson said.