time off

These planespotters have a passion for aircraft and sharing their photographs in quirky online communities.

I always thought that I was pretty smart about aviation because I knew airport codes by heart and that any aircraft called a “7 something 7” was a Boeing plane. But my airplane knowledge is a puddle jumper when compared with
Kevin Garrison’s 747-sized airplane obsession called planespotting.

“By the time I was 15, I was pretty good at identifying just about any aircraft you could throw at me—either in the air or on the ground,” says 53-year-old Garrison, of Lexington, Ky., who writes about aviation. “I can also tell you what kind of airplane it is by the sound—I mean, I can tell a DC-9 from a 727, and a P-51 from a Corsair every time.”

Planespotting, or watching aircraft, started as a defense mechanism during World War II. According to Tina Barseghian, author of Get a Hobby! 101 All-Consuming Diversions for Any Lifestyle (Harper Collins, 2007), citizens volunteered to watch the skies during wartime for incoming enemy aircraft. These days, it’s more about having fun with a hobby than defending the country’s borders. For the most part, planespotters are male, says Barseghian, whose book includes information on planespotting as a hobby. “It’s a lot of fathers and sons, and a kind of male bonding ritual,” she adds.

For Pete Mitchell of Nanuet, N.Y., watching planes was a way to bond with his grandfather when visiting him in Florida. As a teen, Mitchell got a radio transmitter that allowed him to listen in on cockpit and control tower conversations. Even now, when Mitchell travels for his job as a public relations executive, he’ll arrive at the airport earlier than necessary so he can sit for an hour, watching planes.

Not surprisingly, planespotting changed after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. For example, a BBC News article reports that in November 2001, a dozen British citizens were arrested in Greece for doing what planespotters do—photographing airplanes. They were held for more than a month on suspicion of spying, even though they had secured permission in advance from the Greek air force.

Back in the USA, neither the Transportation Security Administration nor the Federal Aviation Administration has a rule on the books prohibiting people from photographing airplanes, says FAA spokesperson Jim Peters, but certain airports do. The Port Authority of York and New Jersey states on its Web site that it has the right to restrict photography at its airports and that “videotaping in runway and taxiway areas at all airports is prohibited at all times.”

Not every planespotter has to risk arrest to pursue this hobby. Many of these enthusiasts limit their obsession to learning airport codes and recording the sounds of airplane engines. “It’s a hobby that doesn’t cost a lot of money,” adds Barseghian. “Many planespotters are happy just watching the planes. Some people collect things. [Planespotters] collect experiences.”

Many plane-spotters can pursue their hobby without regular visits to an airport, thanks to Web sites devoted to this pastime. These must-visit sites include airliners.net (which has a database of almost 100,000 pictures of aircraft), along with plane-spotter.net, planespotter.org, jetphotos.net and nycaviation.com—the latter site is devoted to planespotting in the New York metropolitan area.

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LEAH INGRAM grew up in the flight path of ISP and remembers seeing the Concorde departing from JFK. These days, she flies out of PHL or EWR whenever she travels for business.