Philippine Travel Notes

We ended the previous story with " boarding ", so let's go fly! Pushback ! Only 1425H and we already felt that jerk, as the plane started to push away. Yey! I marked my photo for easy identification since my phone was facing the sun. This: Blue arrrow is the international terminal's name; red arrow is where this plane came from (where we boarded); and, yellow arrow is the domestic terminal. Not really big. Not so big an airport It's maybe as big (or as small) as Davao airport - sama na domestic at international, since as you can see halos magka-dugtong sila. Total building length, ~200 meters. But in terms of passenger traffic (2017), konti lang, about 1.3 million, comparable to BCD or CGY (TAC had 1.7M; ILO had 1.9M; DVO had 4+M), yet Vientiane is a capital. Not a purely government-owned airport BTW, that recent airport upgrade was with 'hefty help' from Japan. Even its operator today is L-JATS (Lao-Japan Airport Terminal Services), a p...

Had a wonderful time roaming around T2 of Noi Bai International Airport , especially the plane-spotting thing. What makes Hanoi ideal for the activity is that there aren't so many flights to overwhelm or confuse you. Yet, not that few for you to get bored. First Impressions Anyway... so I was finally aboard Lao Airlines Flight QV312 from Hanoi to Vientiane! Once seated, I felt a bit uneasy moving-as-I-wished hehehe. Eh kasi naman, the first things that caught my sight were not 'da bes'! Kunwari yan, puti ba yan o brown, ha? Anyway, good that I did my plane-spotting thing earlier. I learned that, this aircraft is an Airbus A320-214 delivered direct from the factory to Lao Airlines in 01DEC2011. O di ba? Not very new, but not too old either. Iyan yan sya, on foreground, yung nasa gate, Aircraft Registry RDPL-34199 . We were already boarding when I took that pic! So, medyo relaaak na (ng konti) ang iyong Pinoy Traveler, kesehoda kung para bang nanglilimahid na an...

Our ways and means are a changing, usually for the better, because of technologies that keep getting better by the day. That includes how we watch and witness things. Especially with fascinatedly watching planes at airports, we now don't just see them zooming-by, we also already immediately know their "identities and circumstances"! All thanks to many technologies, we now have a wittier ways of knowing "planes"! Newfangled Plane-Spotting At airports, the more you know something, the more you become curious and want to learn more about matters related to it. Teka, di ba ganyan ang buhay "in general"? So eto, marami tuloy akong mahaba-habang ma-i-ku-kwento. Mga karanasan ba! Example? Here's a Malindo Air Boeing 737-900ER. It was out of the factory in 2013. Bata pa! Yep, 5 years is still young for an airplane in the commercial airline industry! How did I know it's a Malindo airplane, and how did I know the type of aircraft from t...