Spotting?

** I am going to flying into Denver Airport and was wondering if anyone knew any good places to take photos at?

Thanks!

Will **

Find a parking garage. Getting in close depends on whatever runway they are landing/taking off of. . .

I don’t know Denver very well and thought maybe someone on here did and could tell me where to go?

Rwy 7/25 parallels the rental-car row (78th Ave). If they harass you there (I’d be surprised), try the 45-minute parking area along Pena Blvd just even with the West end of the rwy. (Better than nothing.)

It’s a rural area, so there are dirt roads under the flight paths on every side. It’s generally flat, but it has hills, berms, and gullies that block the view in myriad ways that I don’t know very well. The parking garages are not the place – they’re nestled against the terminal, and there’s not much aviation that’s close enough to there for good photography.

Rwys 16/34 R/L are fairly busy inbound and outbound, and flight paths north of there pass over 120th Ave. In my experience, they seem to use 16 R/L inbound a lot at night, and departures on 34 R/L during the day. 16R/34L is the 16,000 ft rwy needed for international departures, and I’ve only seen it used northbound. I think Lufthansa still has the only non-stop overseas.

The other busy runways are 17/35 located on the southeast side. Freight carrier offices are SW of the south end of those rwys, so you can try “visiting” them and look for arriving/departing a/c from there. Again, they use those rwys both northbound and southbound, but most likely to land northbound or depart southbound; I’ve never seen it vice versa. There’s a fleabitten parking lot on E 71st Ave at Jackson Gap Rd, and it looks like 70th Ave goes through from there to the east. Might be a good place, or retreating south to 64th Ave.

I’d just look closely at Google Maps and then drive around and see if you can get through.

Hello -

I’ll actually be in the terminal with a 2 hour layover, I won’t have time to go and rent a car and come back… I wanted to know where to go in the terminal to get good shots at? I guess with the time I have to kill I can explore :slight_smile:

Can’t find much on DEN but did find this,

airportspotting.com/spotting … l-airport/

Looks like Terminal A might be best.

Have fun!

From within the secured areas, takeoffs and landings are a bit less “intimate” than other airports I’ve been to, just because of the size of the site. If you only want photos of takeoffs and landings, bring a telephoto, and pray for high-quality window glass. (Any waviness in the building windows can really ruin a photo through a big telephoto.) As I said before, most flights take off away from the terminal and concourses, and land toward them, so the wheels-up or wheels-down is usually about 2-3 miles away from you.

But DEN is pretty friendly for watching ramp operations. My favorite place is the pedestrian footbridge from Concourse A toward the main terminal. It’s in the secured area, which makes it easy. (From Concourses B or C, take the train to A and then take the elevator straight up to the top level.) If you wait long enough, you might see a Frontier a/c taxi underneath your feet. I don’t know any other airports that offer that.

Another interesting spot is the extension concourse for regional flights, off the high-numbered end of Concourse B. Just like the old days, with doors right onto the ramp, and crowded narrow hallways. I can’t remember for sure, but I may have had to show someone a ticket to prove I belonged there.

Every other view from the 3 concourses seems good but ordinary to me – nice big windows, comparable to other new airports. The difference is you’re looking out on open plains and a distant ridge of mountains. (The Continental Divide is about 50+ miles away, and easily visible in clear weather.) So maybe you’ll see novel combinations that I didn’t anticipate.

Hey Dadalope –

My buddy told me about that bridge and that aircraft go right under it, I think thats pretty cool and something I am going to check out for sure because I think it would be cool to get some cool shots of all kinds of airplanes coming in and out. I’m believe I am actually coming into Terminal A when I come in from Seattle and then again leaving from A to leave to go to Dayton Ohio.

Where are these narrow hallways you talked about in your reply and what do they offer as far as view?

The narrow hallways I mentioned are for gates B61-95, United Express regional flights. On the airport website in the Maps section I just noticed gates A55-68, which appear to be similar to B61-95.

I would recommend them mainly for the ambience, i.e. the look and feel of airline travel in the 60s and 70s. I don’t remember windows on those gates, so you might only get glimpses of aircraft.

The airport scavenger hunt also reminded me of some airplanes on display on Concourse B, suspended from the ceiling. Their scavenger hunt seems to be aimed at 10-year-olds, and includes some things outside the secured area. But it points out some interesting things to look at.