AWACS at East Midlands Airport.

I live close to east Mids air port (UK) and have noticed that just lately it gets visited quite often by an AwACS that fly's around the area for a while, touches down does something and then goes off again. I find it strange it comes to a public airport to do this as we are not that far from several millirtary bases.

So I was just wondering if any one can shed any light on this for me?

Perhaps they are conducting sweeps for Air security, espesially if there are Military bases nearby.

East Midlands Airport is the main diversionary airfield for the Uk's E-3D Sentry Aircraft based out of RAF Waddington. Due to the location at Waddington they ocassionally have to land elsewhere due to poor weather. As such they have to make regular practice approaches to the airfiled at Eat Midlands in order to build up the Specific experience of the flight deck crews. Also over the past few years the runway and taxiway at RAF Waddington have been resurfaced. Thereby the occurances of land aways whilst temporarily based at RAF Conningsby have increased.

Maybe the Airport is the best place for the Sentry to land with all its years of experience of handling and refuelling commercial 707's and the infrastructure that goes with it. AFAIK all the other bases in the area are geared for much smaller aircraft like the Typhoon and Tornado. Just guessing there btw

They sometimes circuit train at East Midlands Airport. A friend of mine was at the airport and took photographs of one recently. The E-3's (AWACS) have used EMA for circuit training for quite some time.