Toronto, Canada: For aviation devotees at Pearson, it’s all about the airplanes

 It’s warm, it’s sunny and it’s Wednesday — perfect conditions for plane spotting in Toronto.

Warm is good because, well, warm is good.

Sunny is good because that means you can see a long way.

And Wednesday is good because Emirates airline flight EK-241 will be sailing in from Dubai at about 3:45 p.m. — which is excellent.

“It should be here in about two hours,” says Ben Rotem, 15, who is what you might call a plane-spotter’s plane spotter.

The Thornhill high school student is a purist, even by the exacting standards of a rare and unusual breed — aviation zealots who like nothing better than to gather at airports and watch flying machines as they take off and, especially, as they land.

“Most people, they see a machine,” says Rotem, who will enter Grade 10 this fall at Stephen Lewis Secondary School in Thornhill. “For us, we see the power behind it. For my age, I have a rather deep understanding of aircraft.”

Dressed in a grey T-shirt, plaid shorts and dark sneakers, Rotem intends to be an airline pilot. Just now, however, he seems to be every mother’s idea of an ideal son — clean-cut, courteous, a bit precocious maybe and, above all, passionate about what he loves to do.

It’s just that what he loves to do might strike some people as being a wee bit compulsive.

“My parents, they do sort of think it’s a bit weird,” he admits. “I’m the weird one in the family.”
 http://www.thestar.com