Spotterguide.net and other spotting guides: researching spots worldwide

You’ve booked a flight to Lisbon, Dubai or Los Angeles and want to spend your free hours at the fence. But where is the spot from which the approaches come in the right light? Where can you stand, where do you park, do you need a ladder? For exactly these questions, Spotterguide.net has been one of the first addresses for years. This article shows you how the site is built, how to read the information correctly, where its limits lie and which other spotting guides and tools you can use alongside it to research spots worldwide properly.

Spotterguide.net in brief

Spotterguide.net is a collection of spotting guides to airports and other aviation places all over the world. According to its team page, Julian Mittnacht founded the site in 2013 to share his experiences with other spotters. Today a team of editors and authors works on it, supplemented by a long list of guest authors who contribute guides to “their” airports. In the FAQ, the operators describe themselves as volunteers who are connected with spotters in Europe, Asia and America.

The content is organized by region: Europe, Asia, North America, Middle East, Africa, Caribbean, Oceania, South and Central America. Below that come country pages and the individual airport guides. There are also separate sections for military airfields and helicopters as well as a section on stored and museum aircraft, that is, aircraft boneyards and museums. The home page lists over 100 covered countries on six continents. Besides English, the site is offered in several other languages, including German.

How an airport guide is built

If you open a guide for the first time, the amount of text will surprise you. Large hubs like Frankfurt Airport come to more than twenty numbered spots. But the structure is the same in almost all guides, and once you know it, you find the relevant parts in minutes.

Introduction and author line

At the start is an overview of the airport: traffic patterns, peak times, special features like cargo or night traffic, often also observation decks and tours. Below that are the names of the authors, the date of the last change and sometimes a note on who last updated an individual spot. This line is more important than it looks – more on that below.

The star rating

Every guide rates the airport in four categories with up to five stars. The criteria are explained in the FAQ:

Category	What is rated	What it means for you
Movements	Traffic volume, distribution across the runways, hub waves	Lots of traffic, but in waves: it can get quiet between the hub peaks
Variety	Number of airlines and how regularly they fly	An airport dominated by one airline gets fewer stars
Photo Locations	Distance to the aircraft, obstacles, coverage of movements, accessibility, surroundings, weather protection	Tells you how much effort you need to put in for good pictures
Weather	annual hours of sunshine, with deductions for smog or dust	One star below 1,250, five stars above 3,250 hours of sunshine per year

The weather rating is pure climatology. It says nothing about what the sky looks like on your travel day. For short-term planning, Weather apps for spotters and the Windy weather map help you.

Tables on airport and spotting

Compact tables follow. Under the airport information are runways with designation, position and length, terminals with the airlines handled there and usually an airport map on which the spots are marked. The spotting information answers practical questions: do you need a ladder? Can you get there by car or public transit? Are there restrooms, food, hotels? Which season is the best? A separate block explains runway usage, that is, which runway is used for what and in which wind.

The numbered spots

The heart is the spots. Each has a number and a title that tells you which runway and which movements you see from there. Fixed fields follow:

• WHERE: directions by car, on foot or by bus, often with notes on parking.
• WHAT: what you can photograph from there – landings, takeoffs, taxi traffic, apron.
• TIME: season and time of day at which the spot works without backlight.
• MISC.: infrastructure and special features, such as lack of shade or safety notes.
• FOCAL LENGTH: recommended focal lengths, partly graded by aircraft size.

Sample photos are added so you can see in advance which perspective awaits you. Sub-locations get letters like 4A and 4B.

Reading focal length and time entries correctly

Two entries are especially often misunderstood.

The focal length refers, according to the FAQ, to cameras with an APS-C sensor, mainly Canon and Nikon DX, unless noted otherwise. That is not a full-frame equivalent. If the guide says “200 mm” and you shoot full frame, you need about 300 to 320 mm for the same framing. With Micro Four Thirds it’s the other way around; there, less is enough. More on sensor sizes is in the comparison APS-C, MFT or full frame, and the guide to Focal length in plane spotting explains lens choice.

The time entry deliberately gives no clock time. According to the FAQ, it states only the season (summer or winter) and the half of the day – morning, midday, afternoon or evening – in which you shoot without backlight. For fine planning, the operators refer to sun position calculators. How to derive a concrete time window from runway direction and sun azimuth is shown in the guide Planning the sun position.

The biggest weakness: the age of the information

Spotterguide.net makes no secret of it. The FAQ says, in essence, that every guide states the date of the visit and that some locations can be several years old. Due to construction, they may no longer be accessible. Local spotters are asked to report changes.

With a volunteer project covering so many airports, that’s hard to do differently. For you, though, it means: a spot described in 2016 is a lead, not a guarantee. A lot changes at airports – new fences, privacy screens, parking bans, relocated taxiways, closed farm tracks or new hotels that suddenly stand in the frame. Older photos in the guide also tell you what the airlines looked like back then, not which ones fly there today.

How to verify a spot from the guide

Other spotting guides and sources at a glance

Spotterguide.net is extensive but not the only source. Depending on your goal and travel style, other routes are worthwhile too.

Spotting books and Airport Spotting

The British publisher Destinworld brings out printed spotting guides, promoted through the Airport Spotting website, where Matt Falcus mainly writes. According to the publisher, the World Airports Spotting Guides in their third edition cover over 300 airports worldwide. For the UK and Ireland, there’s a separate volume with over a hundred airports and airfields, plus the title Airport Spotting Hotels with hotels for spotters at over 270 airports. The website itself offers news, airport articles, trip reports and a premium area for members.

Books have one advantage: they work without a network and are edited throughout. Their drawback is the same as for any guide, only stronger – time passes between research and print, and nothing changes until the next edition.

Maps and satellite images

For what a guide doesn’t know, map services are unbeatable. Aerial images show you hills, embankments and parking lots, and Street View reveals whether a fence is covered with privacy screening. How to systematically find spots at a completely unfamiliar airport, with no guide at all, is explained in the article Finding spots at an unfamiliar airport.

Community and local spotters

The people on site almost always have the most current information. Many airports have their own spotter groups, clubs or chats. You’ll find entry points in the articles on Facebook groups for spotters, on spotter clubs and on finding your way into the community. Anyone who asks should have done their own research first – a precise question about a specific location is more likely to get answered than “Where can you spot here?”.

Airport websites and visitor offerings

Official observation decks, tours and spotter programs are reliably listed on the airports’ websites. Spotting guides often point to them but don’t always give current opening hours or admission prices. Here the airport’s site is the better source. The article on spotter programs at airports gives an overview of official offerings.

Getting involved: writing or correcting a guide

Spotterguide.net lives on contributions. You can report changes, corrections and missing photo locations to the team. You write a complete new guide in agreement with the team. The instructions on the site are quite concrete:

• At least two to three spots, at large airports one per runway.
• A map on which every spot is named following the scheme “Spot #1 – Name – what you get there,” plus hotels, stops, parking lots and footpaths.
• Your own description with introduction, table and text per spot. Explicitly requested: don’t copy from Wikipedia.
• Sample photos: at least three per location in 3:2 format, level, cleanly cropped and not shot into the light.

That’s a good exercise even if you submit nothing in the end. Anyone who describes their home airport in such a structured way gets to know it better. And a good spotting or trip report often follows similar logic.

Research workflow for a spotting trip

With the sources in mind, preparation becomes routine. This is how many experienced spotters proceed:

1. Get an overview: read the guide on Spotterguide.net or in the book, note the rating and runway usage.
2. Choose candidates: write out two or three spots per runway direction in use, not twenty.
3. Cross-check: satellite image, map and current photos for each candidate.
4. Plan light and wind: use sun position and weather forecast to decide which spot is up at what time.
5. Clarify legal matters: check the rules in the destination country and on site.
6. Organize travel: rental car, public transit, parking options.

You’ll find the complete process with a packing list in the checklist Planning a spotting trip. If you combine spotting with a family vacation, you’ll find tips under Plane spotting on vacation.

What to keep in mind

• Spots are not a free pass. Just because a guide names a location doesn’t mean it’s automatically allowed. Stay on public paths and respect cordons.
• Take ladder notes seriously. If a guide recommends a ladder, check beforehand whether it’s tolerated there. More in the article Ladders, steps and tripods at the airport fence.
• The runway direction in use determines the spot. The prettiest location is useless if aircraft land on the other side. Plan for both directions.
• Photos are protected. Images and texts from guides belong to their creators. A printout is fine for your own notes, but not for publication.
• Reporting back is worthwhile. If a spot no longer exists or a new one has been added, your report helps everyone who comes after you.

Conclusion

Spotterguide.net is a strong tool for spot research worldwide: free, consistently structured and with details on directions, light and focal length that are rarely found bundled like this elsewhere. The limits lie in the age of some entries and in details you have to translate for your gear and travel date. If you take the guide as a starting point and cross-check it with satellite images, maps, current photos and local spotters, you’re very likely to arrive at the right fence. Books like the World Airports Spotting Guides are a good complement for on the road. You’ll find a selection of worthwhile destinations in the overviews of the best spots in Europe and the worldwide bucket list.