Globehopping plane spotters touch down in EdmontonM/h2>
By Jen Ross

It's a bird ... it's a plane ... it's a Colombian Air Force DC-3.

A group of 29 world travellers who make a vacation out of visiting airports had their eyes on Edmonton's skies Tuesday.

Equipped with binoculars, high-powered cameras and telescopes, the British group of aircraft enthusiasts is on a two-week tour to visit more than 30 North American airports.

"It's hard to explain aircraft spotting to non-believers," says Bob Wembley, 44. "People think it odd, but so is something like football when you think about it."

Wembley says the hobby is a social pastime which can easily become an obsession. He's taken tours to airports all around Russia, the Orient, Europe and North America.

Tour organizer and plane-lover Andrew Marsh has been operating the unique vacations for 21 years. He's been to 82 countries and can't even count the number of airports he's seen.

"A lot of the planes we see are the same as the planes we see every day in London," says Marsh, who also works as an air traffic controller at London's Heathrow airport. "It's just nice to see them in different colours."

He says the tours also give enthusiasts a chance to visit aviation museums and see rare planes while travelling the world -- though he admits plane-spotting may seem like a "peculiar reason" to get away for a while. And at $5,000 for a two-week airport hop, Marsh admits the hobby can also be expensive.

But John Hume says it's just like saving up for any other vacation. The 44-year-old Londoner has been on at least a dozen tours since 1988. He keeps his camera close at hand and takes note of the aircraft registrations for every plane he sees.

Hume says so far the highlight of this trip has been seeing a Ford Tri-motor. He was lucky enough to take a quick trip in the 1930s passenger transport plane while in Oshkosh, Wisc., where he also saw the Colombian Air Force plane.

Londoner Gary Matthews, 30, prefers to see military planes. He says these kind of organized tours are a great opportunity to get behind the scenes.

The tour group flew into Calgary Tuesday morning and took a bus to Edmonton. They stopped at the Red Deer and Wetaskiwin airports en route, where they caught a glimpse of everything from commercial jets to the water bombers used to douse Alberta's forest fires.

In Edmonton, they saw more than 100 planes at the City Centre Airport and walked around the hangar that houses the private jet for Alberta's lieutenant-governor.

They were also treated to an after-hours tour of the aviation museum next door.

The group was scheduled to check out the Edmonton International Airport this morning before boarding an 8:10 a.m. flight to Yellowknife.

They say the northern stop is one of the highlights of the tour because of a company called Buffalo Airways, which operates a fleet of older aircraft and cargo planes that service the gold mines.

So what do these airport connoisseurs think of Edmonton's air docks?

"Compared to Heathrow, it's small," says Hume, who last saw Edmonton International on a tour three years ago. "But it's efficient.

"Most Canadian airports are clean and efficient ... Nothing like the Bulgarian variety. Disgusting is putting it politely, and I definitely won't describe the conveniences."

There are more than 900 airplane enthusiasts on Marsh's tour company mailing list. He says most are middle-aged male bachelors. "Why bachelors?" he chuckles. "You figure it out."