I’ve lived in Kent for seven years now, and knew Rochester airport was four miles from where I live as I see the little planes fly by every day, today was the first day that I actually went to visit it on my husbands suggestion, I suppose its more of a mans choice of place to visit than a womans… but I was happy to go along and see what it was about.
We parked the car and stood watching the planes for about ten minutes and then a guy came over to talk to us, he obviously worked there and I wasn’t sure what he was coming to speak to us about, it turned out to tell us that we could go over to the other side of the viewing area and be able to see better, so we thanked him for that and went closer, I had asked if it was ok to take photos, and he’d agreed it was..
We found out about an hour after I’d taken this photo with the black dot in the sky, which was a helicopter, that it was on its way to Holland, which surprised me, and I asked the same helpful guy a bit later if other international flights went out from there, yes to France quite often, and once to USA and also once to Australia! I asked what they did about passports and he explained that they are a border force, at Rochester airport, its such a small place it surprised me.
He also said we were welcome to go into the control tower, so long as they’re not busy the guy in the control tower doesn’t mind, so we went up and had a fascinating chat with the guy there too, he pointed out that we could see Essex and London from there, and another guy he knew came to chat to him talking about the different costs of landing at different airports and the storage costs per plane, the flying guy had just come from Biggin Hill, also in Kent, and had had to give way to two private jets before he could land his smaller plane. I asked why the time on their clock was an hour before my watch time, and he explained that my watch was on British Summer Time but theirs is on Greeniwich Mean Time and never changes, as it stops confusion.
So although I had vaguely thought it might be quite interesting to visit I found the whole thing fascinating, all the little planes, and gyrocopters and helicopters parked there and it might be one of the smallest airports I’ve ever been to, it was the first time I’d been in a control tower and had more of an understanding of what was happening there.