Planespotting at Tegel Airport

Peo­p­le tend to tell me that living in the realm of Tegel Air­port comes with quite some noi­se on my sun­ny bal­c­o­ny. Inde­ed the­re are fre­quent inter­rup­ti­ons of the vil­la­gey silence. I call them sub­woo­fers. Others call them planes.
It was time to walk to the root of the noi­se to dis­co­ver the nest of the subwoofers.
One of the popu­lar places to pla­ne­s­pot is the tiny hill by the high­way off Kurt-Schu­ma­cher-Platz. You walk through a cosy resi­den­ti­al area whe­re gar­dens actual­ly host air­port lamp posts. At the end of the street that runs par­al­lel to the high­way there’s small trail onto the dune (Meteorstraße/Uranusweg).

Experts know the direc­tion of the pla­nes’ landing and start­ing in advan­ce, it can be west or east. From Kurt-Schu­ma­cher-Platz and its tiny hill the most inte­res­t­ing views and sounds will be got­ten when it’s an east­bound day.
You will hear the engi­nes sub­woo­fe­ring when get­ting rea­dy to rum­ble. And arri­vals fly right over your head in a tou­ch­ing (pun inten­ded) distance. Today was west­bound, sad­ly, which means you see the pla­nes landing from quite a distance, a tiny cloud indi­ca­ting the tires have touch­ed ground. They will take off facing you, though.

Fri­ends of com­pa­ri­sons sit down facing some kind of land­mark such as lamp posts to compa­re times of respec­ti­ve take offs (way befo­re the lamp post or ages later).

Text/photos: Simo­ne Lindow

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