Wednesday 9 February 2011

Paris CDG - ATC visit

Thanks to a friend Air Traffic Controller, I got the opportunity to visit the CDG ATC once again (first time was with the International Air Cadets meeting in Paris (IACE)).
We spent a couple of hours in the night-used Central control tower.

During the day, there is one tower in use for each of the two doublet runways. The North one controls runway 09 Left and Right, for wich most aircraft go and depart from Terminal 1 and 3 (long haul foreign airlines flights).
The South one controls runway 08 L and R, for planes taxiing to and from Terminal 2 and S3, the Skyteam hub (mainly Air France).

There is a traffic tower, further East of the Terminal 2 and it is used for ground control only.
And then, there is a fourth control tower, right in the middle of the airport, used at night as a central tower while North and South towers are closed. That's the one we went in, allowing us to chat without disturbing anyone.

Fairly lucky today since the weather was actually good in Paris, apparently it does happen every now and then. I'm being sarcastic actually, the weekly forecast are more spring-like, perfect timing this is!

I managed to get a few decent shots, with quite a few twin-aisle airliners departures including a Singapore Airlines A380, a lot of 772 and 773, a few 747-400 and 747F, the US carriers 757 and 767, lots of ATRs and ERJs, and countless A320 series aircraft.
CDG being one of the busiest airports in the world, there is a lot going on all day long, to my greatest delight!

Airborne life continues...





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