The place we stayed in Phuket is just a mile or so stroll down the beach from the international airport. Far enough that you don’t hear much noise, but close enough so you can walk down and watch planes land and depart. We also spent an hour or so one morning parked alongside the service road that is the back entrance into the airport, paralleling close to the runway. Here is a little aviation porn for those of you whose tastes run that way.
THAI Airways A300 arriving from Bangkok.
THAI Airways A330 arriving from Hong Kong
Transaero B777-200 arriving from one of the Moscow airports.
“Be careful! The jet blast.” Yes, I managed to stand right behind a Dragonair A320 as it powered up for takeoff and learned just how strong that is. Smartly, I turned my back to it as it was kicking up a lot of sand. The blast was pushing little waves about 200 feet into the ocean.
There’s that Dragonair A320 from Hong Kong, about 45 minutes before it sandblasted me.
Another Transaero plane, this one a B747-200, coming from the other airport in Moscow.
Beautiful erosion in the sand banks just off the runway. You can see the top of the fence in the upper right hand side of the picture.
There will be some Mexican food porn from Houston tomorrow for everyone else.
christao408 
You take beautiful photography; though I admit… aviation porn isn’t my thing. But I do look forward to your Mexican food porn tomorrow.
This is better than food porn. Aside from the 747, I can’t tell the other planes apart or even the different models of the 747. Oh my… it is so nice watching those phallic shape things (did I just say that?) take off and land. The paintjob on Nok Air is awesome. Forget about the rest of the stuff at Phuket. I’m staying put at the side of the road and on the beach watching them land. Actually I had no idea that the airport accommodates 747s! What a nice surprise. And I did notice the sound of the chickens at 5:10. btw – did Tawn see you? Sadly J doesn’t share my interest in watching planes. “Did you say you like to watch planes take off and land?” Oh this was nice. *smokes cigarette* I’ll be back to watch the video again so don’t take it down.hahahaha
Skip the Mexican food porn – more planes!!! hahahahaha
Nice to see some planes that don’t often make it to my corner… The photo of the sand dune is great!
I loved the picture showing the erosion of the sand banks. Great picture.
You brought back the memory from my youth – we used to go to the airport and watch the planes for hours. I must have been in my preschool and primary grades. It was a family outing.
I love them!! And I cannot imagine that Phuket has an airport…much less one that accomodates those huge birds!!! I see that Bangkok is not the only part of Thailand that has changed in the past 30 years!!! Wish you had gotten a picture of the “sandstorm” that the jet kicked up around you!!! Ruth AnnPS My favorite is the sand erosion…looks like a piece of art!!!
@Redlegsix – The jet blast was actually pretty scary, and stupid as I’ve worked for an airline and I know darn well how dangerous it is to get behind an airplane. I was shooting somewhat from the side but I moved closer to the centerline of the runway and when the first plane came to take off, it kicked up so much sand. Thankfully it was a relatively small plane. @ElusiveWords – Phuket has been growing their air service and there are many nonstop flights to the Middle East, Australia, and Europe. In fact, during the winter months there are two or three Russian charters a day. The airport has a 3000 meter / 9800 ft runway that generally has strong breezes, so everything except an A380 can operate from there. There is an incredible picture of an Ilyushin IL-86 that is rotating to practically the last meter of the runway here.@Fatcat723 – For some people, it is really a fun pasttime.@ZSA_MD – @murisopsis – That is a fascinating picture, isn’t it? A small stream that is drainage from the airfield cuts through the beach, giving a time-lapse view of how canyons are formed.@Passionflwr86 – Yeah, I know the interest level is limited but I got a lot of good footage and wanted to share it with that segment of the readership. Mexican food porn coming up soon!
@ElusiveWords – Reading a bit more about the link I just included, it turns out that according to the photographer, the wind was heading 090 at 15 knots and the plane choose to depart from the opposite end of the runway, taking a tailwind presumably in the hopes that the slight downhill pitch towards the beach would help them. Seems like a dumb calculation.
I was surprised to see a gigantic Thai Airways, 747-400 flying off the runway, Phuket must be getting very popular nowadays! What a nice plane show, well done!
Oh my god… that is a close call!
LOL…aviation porn.seems like a lot of people are plane enthusiasts but I just like riding them because I know I’m going somewhere on vacation. 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMY-GHpSmX4&feature=player_embeddedmade me think of this.
@brooklyn2028 – There are a decent number of readers of my blog who arrived here originally fro my trip reports on Airliners.net. That explains the skew towards aviation enthusiasm, although I fully appreciate appreciating airplanes just because they are taking you on vacation!@ElusiveWords – Of course, pictures don’t always tell the whole story but it is hard to imagine that wasn’t a near-disaster.@LostSock21 – You can be sure this video is STILL shown at United as part of safety training. What is actually most interesting to me is thinking about how they staged it. That is the departure end of 28L runway at SFO and they turned the airplane 90 degrees to the north to conduct the filming, which looks very unnatural. Must have been shot in the mid-afternoon on a Saturday, when traffic is at its lightest.@CurryPuffy – Airports of Thailand has been working to build up Phuket as an independent destination in the aftermath of the closing of Suvharnabhumi by protesters two years ago. This ensures that the tourism of other parts of the country can continue unimpeded. They are in the process of building up Chiang Mai the same way, with Air Asia launching a new hub there.
Wow that’s neat!
Oh yeah, OH yeah! Look at that plane, look at it. You know you wanna fly baby…
ok, how is that name supposed to be pronounced? I have seen it in various places lately and I keep wanting to pronounce it “fuck it”
@jenessa1889 – The name of the island is pronounced “Pooh-Ket”. In the Anglicization of Thai, “f” is pronounced “f”, “ph” is pronounced “p” as in “pooh”, and “p” is pronounced as a hard “p” as in “pop”.@yang1815 – I thought you would like it.@marc11864 – And so I did!
@christao408 – i don’t get how those two p’s are different, but i do see that’s it’s not an f sound for them at least =p
@christao408 – Like? More like love.
great pictures…………just wonder did you put on a pair of ear plugs while shooting the pics…? 😀
@jenessa1889 – Not to launch into a ton of linguistics, but as my teacher explained to me, the “p” in “pop” is harder, more percussive than the “p” in “pooh”. I don’t know if that makes a lot of sense, but the underlying idea is that there are two distinct consonant sounds there, represented by “p” and “ph” when Anglicized, respectively.@agmhkg – No, didn’t have earplugs. I’ll tell you, the newer generation planes are surprisingly quiet and since we were only exposed for a brief period to moderate noise, I didn’t use any.
@christao408 – it might just be that in English we don’t make any such distinction so we can’t hear it. there’s no l sound in Chinese and Chinese adults cannot detect the different between l and r sounds.