Holiday Mystery Aviation Photo

[seacue]

JDK outdid himself with the mystery flying boat while I was on holiday.

Here is an easy photo of an airliner I took with my electric camera earlier this week (and then cropped). The question is not "what plane" but "where was the picture taken".

seacue

http://users.erols.com/rcarpen/q19.jpg

[spekesoftly]

Dominican Republic?

Edit: Having since had time to research 'Air Guyane', I've learnt that they only do internal flights, so likely to be somewhere in French Guiana.

[JDK]

Thanks for the compliment Seacue.

It's not my (boring) local airport Kidlington... :p

Wild guess- Brazil?

Cheers
James K

[No comment]

I'm new to the Mystery plane/place thing so heres my first guess!

How about Cayenne?

[vintage ATCO]

Given the airline, is it not . . .

Rochambeau
St Georges
Saul
Maripasoula

????

Best I could do with Google :p :D :D


VA

[BUMPFF]

It's an ATR 42.

Sorry chaps. Er... South America?

[seacue]

First Hints:

1) It's an ATR-42, and I think those are 5-bladed props.

2) It is in the Northern Hemisphere.

seacue

[DubTrub]

Hill, water, N Hemisphere = Honnigsvag.

Dunno about the Guyane bit, though.
(and not enough rocks for Honnigsvag?)

[Flap40]

St Maarten Grand Case?????

[Gainesy]

"where was the picture taken".
Just outside the airport.:)

[seacue]

THE WINNAH IS FLAPS40 -

Well ALMOST correct. Esperance / Grand Case is the airport on the French part of of the island. The name is thus St Martin.

I'm honestly a little amazed that someone came up with the answer in so little time and with no serious hints.

Now back to Olde Time Quizes.

And congrats again to Flaps.

seacue

SFG is a small airport on the French side of Saint Martin. "Caribbean Aviation" says runway length is 1200 m. Scaling from the 25000:1 IGM map agrees with the length at 1200 m.

Isn't this a bit short for an ATR42?

The normal approach skims the town of Grand Case, then across a little water and onto the runway.

www.azworldairports.com has a metric - foot conversion problem and claims the length is 3900 m (should be 3900 feet).

Last week the main traffic was about 6 ATR42 departures a day, a number of noisy departures by an Islander, a Caravan once or twice a day and a Piper??? doing what appeared to be training flights. I saw one private jet on the ground.
Perceptually, the Islander was the loudest user and the ATRs the quietest!

seacue

[Flap40]

It was just a guess based on playing with MS FS2004 and looking a a picture on airliners.net that showed some building work going on next to the ramp. I felt that the crane and the water wwere more of a clue than the airline.