2022 Canberra Airport Open Day

Back in April the little brother came up and we went to the Canberra Airport Open Day. We debated waiting at Brindabella Park for the more "interesting" planes to land, but decided against it and waited at Majura Park. None of the advertised planes (except the 737) were there, so we thought we'd see *something* land. But after waiting and waiting nothing arrived, so we went and joined the (by then very long) queue to get in.

As it turned out, most of the advertised aircraft didn't bother to turn up. No Connie, no Hudson (it did a fly-by later but never landed), no Grumman Tracker, no DC-3, no Caribou, no Orion. It was pretty disappointing.

Canberra Airport Open Day

There were only two planes you could get onto - the Qantas 737, and a FlyPelican British Aerospace Jetstream 3212EP. We decided to go on the 737 first up. But because we'd waited so long for something to land, we were late getting in, which meant we had to queue for an hour to get on the 737. Then we wandered around a bit and got a quick lunch (just a sausage sandwich) and queued to get on the FlyPelican Jetstream 32. And there we sat. For THREE F#$%ING HOURS. There's only one door on that little plane, so no flow through. So one group would go in at a time and stay for however long they felt like (the staff weren't moving people along at all). So some would stay for a few minutes. But one group we saw spent like fifteen minutes in there. I was fuming. But we stayed because there was literally nothing else to do. The only other planes there to see were a few little general aviation planes and a couple of helicopters. We saw those right at the very end of the day after we finally got off the Jetstream. We saw all the air shows while queuing. All in all a pretty frustrating day.

Air Force Dassault Falcon 7X A56-003