Three men recently sweltered under the sun on the roof deck of O`Hare International Airport`s parking garage. They were armed with binoculars and a telescope.
As each plane homed in on a runway, the men fixed field glasses on it, picked up notebooks and scribbled away. Then they returned the books to their bags and scanned the sky for more planes.
To an observer they looked suspicious. Were they corporate airline spies peeping on the competition? Could they be terrorists? Or maybe they were angry O`Hare neighbors gathering evidence for yet another campaign against noisy jets.
They were none of the above, as it turned out. Jack Collier, Jim Newton and Ian Gleadhill, all from Manchester, England, are unusual hobbyists. They`re airplane enthusiasts-or ”spotters”-who sight aircraft and inscribe the registration numbers in earnestly kept record books.
Forget hiking the Grand Canyon or sailing the Caribbean. Their idea of a great vacation is to travel the planet and spot a plane whose tail code they don`t already have. ”The whole idea is to see as many different aircraft as you can, since once you`ve seen one, you`ve seen it,” said Gleadhill, 27, an insurance company worker.
Ideally, their goal is to see every last plane in the world. But they`re pragmatists, too. They realize there are planes flying obscure runs from remote fields in Africa and South America that they`ll probaby never lay eyes on.
”There`s a bit of competition,” involved said Gleadhill, who then claimed 209 Lockheed L-1011 sightings.
”I`m two ahead of him,” exclaimed Newton.
Collier boasts of sighting 5,000 of the roughly 8,000 jets flown by airlines in Western nations and 12,000 of what he estimates are 30,000 aircraft in NATO and U.S. military fleets. All three have seen more than 500 Boeing 747s but need to get to Asia to fill in the holes in their lists.
When the three vacationing bachelors were themselves recently spotted, they were still in the early days of a two-week driving tour (cheaper for their purposes) of the U.S. or, more accurately, many of its airports, military bases and air museums. And it wasn`t the first time.
Consider the spotter a sort of birdwatcher, whose pursuit is aluminum, not feathered. ”That`s probably the best analogy,” said Newton, a glib 46-year old engineer with a grizzled beard who resembles an English sea captain. ”Why do we do it? We find it relaxing and we also get to travel the world.” He`s been spotting for 25 years.
While there don`t seem to be many spotters in the U.S., they`re fairly numerous in Britain, the men said. About 2,000, virtually all men, belong to their Manchester aviation society alone.
Like many of their compatriots, the men used to ”collect” railway steam engine numbers, says Collier, 42, an insurance company assistant manager who has spotted for 20 years. But then in the 1960s British Railways scrapped steam engines for less romantic diesels.
After a brief hiatus, Collier and Newton transferred their passion to planes. Perhaps more flexible because of his relative youth, Gleadhill collected all the diesel engine numbers before making the switch.
By the time a curious Chicagoan approached them around noon last Saturday, they had already been standing for three hours on the sunbaked parking deck, where temperatures approached 100 degrees. ”We`re here for the volume,” said Newton, adding that O`Hare wasn`t as stimulating as two Illinois and Indiana air force bases toured the day before. There they saw military tanker planes, the flying gas stations for which they have a particular soft spot.
Even so, they were to remain there until about 5 p.m. eyeballing jets, jotting numbers and consulting directories containing more details on nearly every plane in the Western world`s air fleet than anyone-except spotters-would ever care to know.
”Some of the people I know back in England think I`m daft,” said Collier. But to anyone here who might concur, Newton has a few select words:
”The trick and the truth is we don`t care what anyone else thinks. We know what we`re doing is legal and we`re not bothering anyone.”
Spotters let little get between them and their acquisition of another tail code. Collier remembers a March trip to Chicago two years ago. Despite temperatures that never rose past freezing, he, Gleadhill and another man stayed on the roof for hours stomping and shivering. Newton once braved a temperature of 9 degrees F. to ogle airplanes from atop the garage of the Pan Am terminal at New York`s Kennedy airport.
Occasionally, airport authorities are as frigid as the weather. They`ve been stopped by British police. ”They`ll ask us what we`re doing and when we tell them they`ll say `as long as you`re not nuclear protesters, we don`t mind. Carry on,` ” says Collier.
Only weeks ago, Gleadhill and Newton were almost arrested at Paris`
Charles De Gaulle airport even though they were in a public concourse. They were released only after satisfactorily answering questions hurled at them by the gendarmes.
They credit jitters about terrorism to some of the incidents. But they attribute their contretemps with the French to another cause.
”The French don`t like the English, and the English don`t like the French,” said Newton. ”It`s not quite the entente cordiale, is it?”
Generally, said Newton, ”as you`d anticipate, we have to be very circumspect. We like to make our presence known. At military bases we obtain permission. If they say `no,` we don`t go.”
”You have to be especially careful in Eastern Europe, especially with military aircraft,” said Gleadhill, who has practiced his hobby in Czechoslovakia.
During earlier trips to the U.S., they`ve been to Memphis, touring the airport at 2 a.m. because that`s the optimum time to collect numbers from the Federal Express fleet based there.
Newton once drove 120 miles one-way from Tucson to Douglas, Ariz., just to take a picture of a vintage Convair passenger plane and check it off his list. They`ve even visited factories and recorded numbers before planes have left the production line.
They figure that between them they`ve hit nearly all 50 states, including Alaska. During a previous U.S. spotting mission, Collier took 22 plane trips in two weeks. One of this trip`s expected highlights is an old Lockheed Constellation, reputedly now a restaurant in Penndel, Pa. ”We`ll probably have a meal on it if it`s open,” said Newton.
Suddenly, Gleadhill shouted something that sounded like ”Icky.” He had his telescope trained on an incoming plane. The craft floated down to the runway and rolled towards the terminal. It was an Iberia jumbo jet, tail code ECEEK. ”All three of us needed that one,” said Newton, excitedly scribbling in his book.
Next year, the men plan to vacation in Athens. Their aviation society has booked a hotel with rooftop pool and bar. But the prime amenity is the hotel`s location, right next to the Athens airport`s main runway. ”We`ll drink beer, play water polo and watch airplanes come in at eye level,” said Newton.
It isn`t easy trying to convince incredulous observers of their purpose.
”I once spent three quarters of an hour in Dallas trying to explain to a drunk what we do,” Collier recalled. ”He kept saying `No you don`t. What are you really up to.` ”
Sometimes the spotters themselves can`t believe the lengths they go to.
”When it`s six o`clock in the morning, freezing and dark, you do ask `What am I doing here? I could be in bed asleep,` ” says Collier. ”But we`re just kids who never grew up.”
