I’m not dead!
I know, I know, I haven’t done one of these in absolutely forever. I’m sorry about that. But if you haven’t seen my last one, go look at it: Narrow-Bodies Far From Home .
I’ll be honest, I kind of lost the motivation of spotting, editing and everything in between for a while, and it’s still not back fully. But me and my class went on a field trip to Safran and TUI at Brussels Airport, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity of getting some “behind the scenes” hangar shots.
We got very educational tours around both the Safran facility and TUI hangar. I was unfortunately not allowed at all to take photos at Safran, but TUI did allow it.
If you don’t know: Safran at Brussels does engine revisions for all sorts of airlines. They do this for the LEAP family of engines, at the moment the LEAP-1A and LEAP-1B of the A320neo and 737 MAX family. In the past they worked on engines like the CFM-56 and JT8D. Some current customers include Frontier Airlines, Air India and Flynas, among many others.
I’m assuming you know who and what TUI are, so I won’t explain it too much here.
Basic information:
- No runway info this time.
- Camera: Sony NEX-6 and Samsung S22 (yes, a phone)
- Lens: Sony E PZ 16-50mm and phone lens, whatever the S22 uses.
Let’s got on with it.
Firstly we got a tour around the smallest member of the TUI Airlines Belgium fleet, the Embraer E190 (OO-JVA). This aircraft was getting work done on the horizontal stabilizer and the engines.
Here is a short with OO-JAQ, a 737-800 included as well.
We also got to see the E190s flight deck. This was actually the first time I ever got to go in an airliner flight deck!
After that we got to go aboard OO-JAQ, a veteran TUI Airlines Belgium 737-800.
Here we can see OO-JVA as well.
And here we have the 737 Next Generation flight deck. A bit smaller than I thought it would be, I’ll be honest.
That is one big tail!
Then we went on to a 737 MAX 8! This one was actually from TUI Airways of the U.K., registered G-TUMA. This one should be going to Sunwing Airlines in Canada for the winter season.
Here we have the flight deck, with those massive screens.
This MAX seemed to have recently gotten a new nose cone as well. From a -800 with the old livery no less.
And here we have one of the giant CFMI LEAP-1B engines.
And the last aircraft in the hangar was also a U.K. registered one from TUI Airways, this being G-TUKP. This one, like the MAX, should also be going to Sunwing Airlines in Canada for the winter season.
That’s all folks! This was probably one of the best school trips I’ve ever taken. Very informational and we got to see a lot of stuff you’d never get to see otherwise.
I hope you all liked the shots, do let me know what you thoughts of them and of course, plug incoming.
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