the right side?

The right side of the fence?!

In the last few months I´ve been flying quite a lot, on our normal network as well as charters all over europe and once even arabia and onwards to the subcontinent. That was a long way in an ATR I can tell you ;)

I also managed to get few, highly enjoyable daytime flights, the fact that I`m very happy about flying during the day once shows how easy it is to please us night prowlers...

A very interesting point about those day flights was that I managed to get myself on to the mayor aviation photo webites, thanks to the spotters that shot pictures of us landing. This might not sound special to you, but I can still vividyl remeber the time when I was trying to get to the airport as often as possible, taking pictures of airplanes and just watching all the action going on airside. So now being pictured on the other side of the fence was something small, but special for

I think I made it to the right side of the fence.

up north, where the sun never rests

 

airplane status is all good engines running, propeller spinning, we`re headed almost straight up north tonight. After leaving Cologne and passing by Hannover, Bremen and Hamburg we`re now almost abeam Copenhagen, weather has cleared and we have a nice view a the ships sailing the balitc sea below. We`ll at least we can see their lights…

It´s half past 12 local time and still its dusk, the sky ahead (direction north) is still glowing in a fantastic varierty of colours. So far the remaing lights helps a lot to fight of the tiredness. As minutes pass we keep pushing north and after another 30min its time to start the descend towards oslo, our destination tonight.

After an eventless landing at an airport still very much a sleep we have to wait for a couple of hours and wait for the cargo for the return flight.Amazingly the sky is still lightly light, and while we head for a coffee daylight is rapidly approaching.The clouds are still dark but the sky above is allright light up brightly.

after landing in Oslo

By the time we finished loading its infact still very early morning (around 4 local) and our plane sits on the ramp in broad daylight. So ist sunshade time again!

Still traffic is very light to not existiong so after a smooth departure we get a lovely direct of more than half the route and are southbound again heading for Hahn airport with a fully loaded plane.

southern Norway                             northern Denmark

Sipping coffee out the thermos bottle I`m enjoying the beatiful view of the northern landscape.passing underneath, life couldn`t be much better

Elbe river

As the radio frequencies and the sky start to fill up with early morning flights its time for us to get ready for our approach in hahn, a few nice directs and we´re qucikyl established on the ILS.

After securing our plane its of the hotel for us, and finally off to bed

Where am I?

 

Its pitch black dark, I can hear my alarm clock going off and while my hands try to find it and shut it off I try get my mind straigth, where am I? Bucharest, no the bed is smaller, Prague? no the room is to dark…

While I fumble aorund with my alarm I almost knock over a bed lamp and my coffee mug , ok thats a give away, I´m at home!

I finally manage to kill my alarm and switch on the lights, ok ist just noon my mind wakes up as well and I remember I`m off for the day…

A few month ago I wouldn`t have believed that this could acutally happen to me but apparently switching from hotel to hotel has had some impact.

The last few weeks or month have been pretty tough, with the winter kicking in at full force we had to fight delays, basicly every where and for every thing: loading, departure, arrival, or off loading…

At least the beginning of 2011 gave us all a little break, with temperatures rising a little and snow melting away we had to spent less times waiting and freezing, the delays dropped to allmost 0 and the operation smoothed out somewhat.

But still from time to time the winter comes back …

last week suddenly rain turned into snow again, so again we ended up beeing delayed because the de-icing teams where not really prepared for that sudden weather change. In the end we where able leave the ramp with just a small delay, However as we were taxing out to the runway we could hear one of our company airplanes returning to the ramp and when we where not handed over to tower, but stuck in queue of airplanes we started to realise something was going wrong…

A few minutes later we were informed that the airport is now closed for snow removal at least for the next 45min… That completely busted our holdover time (the time during which the deicing fluid on the airplane gives sufficent protection) and we ended up taxing back to the ramp for another deicing treatment and waiting for the airport to reopen its runways…

In the end we left with about 1.5h delays, but we where quite happy to be on our way. Approaching Basel the weather broadcast sounded promising with good visibilty and high clouds and no snow at all, so we where expecting a rather easy approach and then off to the hotel…

Again this didn`t seem to be our day instead of high clouds and no snow we ended up the middle of strong snow showers, very limited visibitlity and low clouds… Just above the minimuns we were able to pick up the runway and lights and continued for a save landing.

While shutting down the airplane we saw that the hole airport had gone back to winter wonderland and again they closed an airport for snow removal, but as it was off to the hotel for us we we`re lucky once that day…

And the waiting and delays where left for the daylight guys

Sunrise

Life on the line… BEGINS!

Yes I`m done with the type rating and base training and after lots of paperwork I finally can really start!

Of course for the first few legs (40 to be exact) I´ll be flying together with a sort of instructor or more correctly “training captain”. They´re supposed to help me start in the normal ops and also guide and teach where necessary. But as mentioned above this part of my training will be done on the normal flights, so carrying passengers or cargo across Europe.

One of my first flights took me east to Sofia, Bulgaria. We took off early in the morning and so we were treated with a magnificent sunrise over Austria.

I´ve been able to see lots of sunsets during my training flights but never a sunrise in the air. So If I recall correctly this was my second sunrise I´ve seen from the cockpit, the first one long ago when was still a small kid dreaming of becoming a pilot. Flying with my family I was allowed to visit the cockpit on a Qantas 767 just as the sun started to rise, somehow that stuck in memory…

Cheers