Plane spotting in winter: de-icing, cold and low light

Minus four degrees, your fingers are stiff, your breath steams – and then a long-haul jet rolls out of a cloud of orange spray toward the runway. Plane spotting in winter is less comfortable than on a summer evening, but it delivers pictures you never get in July: low raking light, steam at the engines, snow on the apron and aircraft in the middle of de-icing. This guide shows you how to use winter light, what happens during de-icing, how to get camera and batteries through the cold and which weather conditions decide your spotting day.

Winter spotting: the short answer

In winter you gain on light and lose on time. The days are short, but the sun stands so low that you have soft side light from morning to afternoon – provided you stand on the right side of the runway. Add subjects that exist only in the cold season: de-icing, steam, snow and clear long-distance visibility after cold fronts. The flip side is low stratus, batteries that drain faster and condensation in the camera. If you have these three points under control, you will experience winter as one of the most exciting spotting seasons.

Winter light: low, soft and direction-dependent

At the winter solstice the sun in Germany reaches only about 12 to 20 degrees above the horizon at midday – less in the north, more in the south. It rises in the southeast and sets in the southwest. For aircraft photos that has two consequences.

First, the light stays flat all day. Fuselage undersides, landing gear and engine inlets are still lit, even on landing approaches from below at an angle. The harsh midday sun that blows out white fuselages in summer practically does not exist in December. And because the asphalt hardly heats up, there is no heat haze – taxi shots over long distances get sharper.

Second, the side of the runway matters even more. On the south side of an east-west runway you have the sun almost continuously at your back. On the north side, by contrast, you shoot into backlight nearly the whole day, because the sun never moves to the north. How to bring azimuth and runway direction together is explained step by step in the guide Planning the sun position.

Factor	Winter (December/January)	Summer (June/July)
Sun height at midday	about 12–20 degrees	about 58–66 degrees
Sunrise and sunset	southeast and southwest	northeast and northwest
Heat haze	hardly any	often strong over asphalt
North side of an east-west runway	backlight almost all day	usable in the morning and evening
Usable day length	short, but light soft almost throughout	long, harsh light at midday

An example: at the Munich Airport visitors’ hill, the two runways of Munich Airport run almost exactly east-west. In winter, looking north toward the north runway is the rewarding option, while looking south is worthwhile at best for silhouettes. For spots with a different runway axis the same logic applies, just rotated to the respective direction.

Blue hour without the night shift

An underrated advantage: because it gets dark early in winter, the blue hour falls in the late afternoon, when many airports are still busy. You get landing lights, illuminated tail fins and the apron under floodlights without waiting until late at night. How to set exposure and ISO for this is in the guide Photographing aircraft at night. Keep in mind that many airports have operating restrictions at night – more in the overview of night flight bans at German airports.

De-icing: the subject that exists only in winter

Even thin deposits of ice, snow or rime on wings and tail noticeably change the aerodynamics. That is why aviation follows the principle that critical surfaces must be free of deposits at takeoff. Under the relevant conditions the aircraft is treated before departure – and that is a feast for you as a spotter.

De-icing and anti-icing

Professionals distinguish two steps:

• De-icing removes existing ice, snow or rime. For this, a heated mixture of glycol and water is sprayed on at high pressure. In the cold air it steams heavily – those are the clouds that make the aircraft almost vanish for a moment.
• Anti-icing then protects the cleaned surfaces from new buildup, for example in continuing snowfall. The fluids used for this are thickened, cling to the aircraft and are sheared off by the airflow only during the takeoff roll.

If both steps are carried out one after the other, it is called the two-step procedure. How long the protective layer works is described by the holdover time. It depends on fluid, temperature and precipitation and in heavy snowfall is sometimes only a few minutes long. If it expires before the aircraft lifts off, it must be treated again. That is why on snowy days you often see queues in front of the de-icing areas and delayed departures.

The colors of the fluids

Type	Typical color	Property	Use
Type I	orange	thin, sprayed on heated	removing ice, snow and rime, short protection
Type II	usually colorless	thickened, clings until the takeoff roll	anti-icing
Type III	yellow	middle ground between Type I and II	aircraft with a lower liftoff speed
Type IV	green	thickened, longest protection	anti-icing in precipitation

For photos this is a stroke of luck: a fuselage sprayed orange and then a wing shimmering green make pictures with color that you get on no other day of the year. It looks especially impressive on large aircraft like the Airbus A350-900 or the Boeing 747-8, where the spray trucks with their lifts have to work all the way up to the tail.

Where you see de-icing

Whether and where you can watch de-icing depends on the airport. Some airports de-ice right at the parking position, others at dedicated de-icing areas – there, the runoff fluid can be better collected and partly treated. At some airports these areas are near the runway thresholds. From an observation deck with an apron view, such as Observation Deck B in Zurich, you are more likely to see the work at the positions. If the de-icing areas are near the runway ends, you have better chances at spots in that area. Which runway direction is currently in use also plays a part – the guide Understanding the runway direction in use explains this.

Cold and camera: what really harms

Modern cameras generally cope well with temperatures below freezing. Two things cause problems above all.

Batteries: lithium-ion batteries deliver much less power in the cold. A battery that lasts a whole spotting day in summer can seem empty after a short time in frost. The charge is often not lost, though – warmed up again, it brings back part of its capacity. So carry two or three charged spare batteries in an inside pocket on your body and swap them in rotation. That also goes for your smartphone, which you need for the live map and weather.

Condensation: the critical moment is not standing outside but going indoors. If an ice-cold camera enters a warm car or café, it fogs up on the outside and, in the worst case, on the inside – on lenses and electronics. So put the camera in a tightly sealed plastic bag while still outside, or leave it in the closed camera bag until it has slowly warmed to room temperature. It is best to remove the memory card and battery beforehand so you are not tempted to open the bag too early.

More points that count in winter:

• Breath and viewfinder: when you look through the viewfinder, your breath can condense and freeze on the display or eyepiece. Exhaling slightly to the side helps.
• Snow on the front lens: a lens hood keeps off flakes and splashes. Keep a microfiber cloth handy for drying – do not wipe with a glove.
• Tripod and metal: metal legs get unpleasantly cold in frost. Foam padding or gloves make holding them bearable.
• Autofocus in snow: dense snowfall can pull the focus onto the flakes instead of the aircraft. A smaller focus area helps.

You will find a complete packing list with camera, lenses and accessories in the gear checklist. For the right settings with snow and bright sky, take a look at the guide to camera settings for plane spotting.

Staying warm yourself: clothing and tactics

Spotting means standing and waiting, and that is exactly what makes cold so unpleasant. A few rules from practice:

Pay special attention to ice around fences, embankments and hills: spotters’ hills like the Vienna spotters’ hill or earth embankments get slippery in snow and ice. Stay on cleared paths and designated areas, even if the view would be better a few meters farther on. What is allowed around airports is summarized in the article Is plane spotting allowed?.

Reading winter weather patterns

In winter the weather decides even more than usual whether the trip is worthwhile. Typical conditions and what they mean for you:

Weather pattern	What you see	Opportunities	Risks
Low stratus / inversion	gray lid, often for days	even, shadowless light	visibility sometimes so low that approaches are hardly visible
Clear cold-front air	blue sky, great long-distance visibility	crisp colors, no shimmer, contrails	strong wind, feels very cold
Snowfall	flakes, snow-covered apron	de-icing, clearing vehicles, atmosphere	runway closures for clearing, delays
Frost after a clear night	rime on aircraft and grass	de-icing in the morning, visible engine steam	ice at the spot, cold fingers

In fog and low clouds the airport operates with all-weather approaches. That often means larger gaps between landings and thus less traffic. How such approaches work is explained in the article on the ILS approach. In snowfall, runways are temporarily closed and cleared. At airports with several runways, operations can then continue on another one – so your spot can suddenly be on the wrong side.

The most important planning tools are the airport’s weather reports. How to read them is shown in the guide Reading METAR and TAF: visibility, cloud base, temperature and precipitation are laid out compactly there. For days with rain, wind and gray skies, the article on plane spotting in bad weather has more ideas.

What is different in the winter schedule

Airlines’ winter schedule begins on the last Sunday in October and runs until the end of March. Some routes drop out, others are added. Leisure airlines such as Condor or TUIfly fly more to warm-climate destinations in winter. Which connections exist specifically changes from season to season – a look at the arrival and departure schedules before the trip is worthwhile.

Airports in winter sports regions have a charm of their own. At Salzburg Airport, charter flights on winter weekends traditionally bring ski vacationers from all over Europe to the Alps, often with airlines you rarely see otherwise. Farther north, Oslo Airport is an example of how routinely Scandinavian airports handle snow – there, de-icing and clearing are part of daily life all winter.

Conclusion

Plane spotting in winter demands more preparation but rewards you with light and subjects that summer cannot offer. The low sun makes almost any time of day photographable, as long as you stand on the sun-facing side of the runway. De-icing with orange and green fluid, steam at the engines and snow-covered aprons give your pictures color and mood. And if you keep batteries warm, pack the camera when going indoors and read the weather beforehand, little stands between you and your best winter picture.