Following post was inspired by a thread called That Perfect Aviation Moment on AirSpaceOnline.com. I posted this story there first, but then decided to publish it here as well, along with some more photos from that day.
1st of March 2007 was a mostly rainy day in Hamburg. My wife and me had a week off and spent the day in and around Hamburg. In the early afternoon, it stopped raining and the sun came out. As we were close to the airport, I suggested to go there and watch some arrivals. I parked the car nearby and we took a walk to the Flughafenstrasse bridge, from where you have a good view on runway 23 arrivals.

Lufthansa, Airbus A300B4-603, “Kronberg / Taunus”, D-AIAK.
Above LH A300 was one of the few widebodies arriving that afternoon. While I was mostly paying attention to the other arriving narrowbodies and CRJs, my wife walked around and took a look at what was parked at the gates. She then returned to me and said: “Look, there’s an Iran Air aircraft parked at the gate, but it doesn’t look like the usual A300.”
She was right. From where we stood, we could only see the tail, so we walked a bit closer to get a better view - and then I realized it was an 747SP.
And just when I realized that, they started to push it back from the gate. It would take off from runway 33, and there was no chance to get a good view on that from where we were standing. The only good option was the “Coffee to Fly” spotters point - but that was 3 km away from the car, which again was parked 1 km away from us. We briefly looked at each other, and then made an immediate decision: RUN!
We sprinted back to the car, me still carrying my photo gear. We crossed a street on red light and almost got hit by a bus. Reaching the car, sweating and panting, I fired up the engine, my camera bag still on my shoulder. If there were any red lights or speed limits on the way, then I did not see them.
With screeching tires, we stopped at the “Coffee to Fly” only very few minutes later. I jumped out of the car, looked to the end of the runway…
…and saw to my delight that the 747SP was beginning the takeoff run in that very second.

I had only seconds to get the camera set up, but I made it. Light was poor, backlight and lots of spray and reflection from the still wet runway. But I made the best out of the situation, and got some fairly good shots.



That was one perfect aviation moment. Funny thing is, I am far from being a hardcore spotter or aviation photographer. I go out shooting maybe once every 1-2 months, and will just shoot whatever is in the air then. But when I saw that 747SP being pushed back from the gate, I smelled blood.
Turned out that the aircraft (registration EP-IAB) had been restored to airworthy condition only a few days before, after having spent more than 2 years on the ground along with Iran Air’s other 747SPs.
I was definitely very happy with my fairly rare catch. Farewell, EP-IAB. Have a safe flight back to Tehran!

Aviation