My day at London’s secret plane-spotting paradise
I check the time and realise that I’ve been hanging around London’s premier plane-spotting hub for longer than I had expected to. I’m finding it oddly hard to leave.
Which is surprising given that it’s a cold, wet December morning, and I’m standing on a patch of grass near a busy dual carriageway, under the Heathrow flight path, when I could be at home eating eggs in my dressing gown.
I suppose I had a certain idea about who I might encounter at the end of Myrtle Avenue, a 1930s cul-de-sac in Hounslow located opposite Heathrow’s southern runway (27L). The neighbourhood is descended upon daily by dozens of plane-spotters, a number that swells to hundreds on sunny days, thousands when a rare jet lands.
The spotters gather on a strip of grass at the end of the street, next to a litter-strewn dual carriageway, the other side of which is the runway. If you’re motorphobic, remotely worried about pollution, or tripping on acid, there probably isn’t a worse place you could find yourself in England.
And yet there’s something oddly uplifting about that patch of grass and the eccentrics who gather there. They weren’t who I thought they would be. I expected socially awkward men of a certain vintage, standing around, nodding deferentially at planes, talking about shutter speeds and f-stops, feeling grateful, frankly, to be away from their equally relieved wives.
Glenroy Pinnock shatters that illusion immediately. The disarmingly charming Jamaican welcomes me into the plane-spotting community with a heartfelt handshake, a beaming smile and infectious enthusiasm.
“I’m here for the fun, mate,” he says, as a BA jet emerges from the clouds on its approach to Heathrow. “I’m in my element. You never know what to expect.”
Pinnock has a set of step ladders with him, which hardly seems necessary given how tall he is. But it adds a couple of feet, gets him closer to the action.
“I’ve always been fascinated by planes,” he beams. “My biggest fascination is that they manage to stay in the air. I can never get my head around that. It’s…”
He interrupts himself as an Emirates A380 roars overhead.
“Woah,” he shouts, climbing the steps, rain-spattered phone in hand. “I’m not missing that. It’s the biggest passenger plane out there.”
It’s quite something, feeling the roar of an A380 directly above you as it comes in to land; close enough, it seems, to throw a ball at. There’s a mild sense of danger to the experience. It’s oddly invigorating.
Pinnock, who lives in London, comes to Heathrow most Sundays. He uploads his footage to his YouTube channel – AirVloggingGP – which has 6,400 subscribers.
Does he have a partner? “Yeah,” he smiles. “She knew I was one of those crazy plane people when we met. She likes [plane-spotting] but not that much. I’m happy she gives me the time to come and enjoy myself.”
Standing nearby with their eyes in the sky are Helen and Kevin Dudley. The retired couple from Swansea are in London to do some Christmas shopping and see the sights, including planes landing on 27L.
“We’re not what you’d call plane-spotters,” says Kevin, who found out about Myrtle Avenue after driving past it once. “We’ve tried to come a few times but it’s weather dependent.”
No kidding. I’ve tried repeatedly to visit, only to be scuppered by the wind; when there’s an easterly, planes land on the southern runway from the west, rather than coming in over Myrtle.
Just then, another A380 roars into view. If you’d never seen a plane before, you might think this was the end of the world.
“It’s nuts, isn’t it,” says Helen, shaking her head. “The funny thing is, I don’t even like flying.”
“I really wanted to see an A380,” adds Kevin, looking content. “We were the first ones down here this morning,” he adds, proudly. “Now look.”
I scan the grass. A dozen or so souls are looking upwards into the driving rain. These are the hardcore. No fair-weather spotters here.
They don’t get more hardcore than Oliver Herrmann, 13, and Amaro Arobaga, 14, two schoolboys from south-east London, here with their mothers, Lilly Herrmann and Davinder Virk.
“She’s the bag bearer and I’m the brolly bearer,” jokes Lilly, shivering as she holds an umbrella above the boys.
Oliver and Amaro met at 27R – Heathrow’s northern runway – and have been friends since. They’re down here most weekends. Both want to be pilots.
“It’s not a common interest,” admits Oliver, though he has 27,000 plane-spotting followers on TikTok. “My generation are mostly at home, being lazy, looking at screens – we’re out here in nature, doing our hobbies.”
Do they get any stick for it at school? “They call me the pilot kid,” says Amaro, but that’s about it, possibly because of his other hobby. “I do mixed martial arts, too.”
Both kids have SLRs with long lenses and phones with the Flightradar24 app on, which tells them what’s coming in. Does it get competitive? “It can do,” says Amaro. Sometimes there’s a fiver riding on who can take the best picture.
Out of nowhere, an engine roars like nothing we’ve heard that day. The pilot is backing out of the landing. “It’s a go-round, it’s a go-round,” the kids shout to each other, excitedly papping the plane as it gains altitude. They are jumping now, the boys, barely able to contain their excitement. “Hear the power of the engine,” shouts Oliver.
The mothers smile. “They need a passion otherwise they’d be on the streets,” says Davinder.
“It’s mainly vaping and hanging around for teenagers nowadays, isn’t it?” adds Lilly. “I don’t mind spending my weekends at Heathrow. It won’t be forever. They grow up fast. I’m enjoying his passion.”
It’s certainly contagious.
We hear another whoosh of wings, this time from behind. It’s a pair of swans – the A380s of the bird world – flying low over us. We watch them go in quiet admiration.
My socks soaked through, I leave the lads and their mums, and walk back to Hatton Cross tube station. On the way, I encounter Sarah Barrett from Stevenage on the grass verge. We’re right under the planes here. The noise is deafening.
“I got addicted to it last year,” shouts Barrett, 41, as lorries speed by. “I took my son to see the planes at Luton. He was enthusiastic for a bit, but I caught the bug.”
She pauses to admire the contrails dancing off the wings of a landing jet. They look like tornadoes and are mesmerising.
“I love the bad weather,” she says. “You get more go-rounds and wobbly landings.”
Her husband doesn’t share her enthusiasm, though. “He came and started taking the mick: ‘oh look, another plane,’ he’d say. I said: ‘you don’t get it’.”
What is it, I ask, about plane spotting? “I find it therapeutic,” she says, her blonde hair poking from her white beanie. “There are not many things I can stand and do for hours on end, but this is one of them.”
How to do it
Unless there’s an easterly wind, planes land at 27L for half the day, then switch to 27R to give Myrtle Avenue’s residents a rest – or vice versa. Heathrow’s runway alternation schedule has more details, but the timetable is subject to change so keep an eye on the Heathrow Runways Twitter/X account.
The nearest tube station is Hatton Cross. Parking is limited, often impossible. A nearby BP garage has loos.
