Manchester Monday 7 6th July 2026.

Side view of a three-engined jet airliner taxiing from left to right along a grey concrete taxiway. The plane is mostly white, with a red stripe running along the body covering the passenger cabin windows, black "MartinAir" titles on the upper forward fuselage, and a bare metal finish belly. The black registration "PH-MCR" is on the upper rear fuselage, next to a small Dutch flag, with black "MartinAir" titles on the side of the centre engine pod, running through the white tail. The tail has a large red logo, looking somewhere between a stylised upper-case letter "M", and a closed right fist with only 3 fingers and the thumb pointing downwards and facing the viewer. This same logo is repeated in a smaller form on the sides of the engine pods under the wings, and on the up-turned wing-tips. Grey concrete apron fills the foreground, with various buildings surrounded by trees filling the background, slowly vanishing into bright but hazy sky.

PH-MCR, McDonnell Douglas MD-11CF, MartinAir Holland, taxiing to the terminal at Manchester Airport, I think operating a flight for Virgin Atlantic.

(Virgin operated a series of flights across the Pond with a MartinAir B767 around this time, while waiting for a new B747 to be delivered).

This plane was pretty much brand new at the time, having been delivered to MartinAir on the 30th March, just over a week previously.

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