A good day

Sometimes, very rarely, the stars will align in such a way that a day goes very very well despite the evil forces' best efforts at ruining it. Today was one of those days.

I got to fly our newest A320, delivered only last week, on a pleasant 2 sector - 5 hour day. The weather was more than magnificent and ATC's best attempts at ruining our already dodgy on-time performance record failed. Singapore even went out of it's way to get us the level we wanted and save us a few kilos of fuel.

I think a picture is the best way to describe the feeling...

What other office has a view as good as this one?

S.

in Sweden

I'm sitting in Stockholm right now, it's just going on 9:30 local and I've been up for 5 hours already. I've just completed my annual A320 type rating renewal sim check, a short flight which involved dealing with an engine failure, some other random system malfunction and flying a few approaches. I arrived in Stockholm yesterday around 3 and I fly back to London in 2 hours.

Very little changed since I was last year a year ago and coming back for the sim ride was a bit like going home to one's old uni or school. Memories of clicking away at computer-based-training consoles until the wee hours of the morning and the perpetual cold/darkness of the Swedish winter came rushing back.

The sim ride was actually almost fun - my Captain was one of the instructors from the type rating and the examiner was another of my instructors so it was more of a reunion than an exam. It a shame I can't stay any longer but I'll be back sooner or later...

S.

Pictures - 3

Some more pictures...

Pahang river

Kuching

In the queue...

En-route somewhere...

300

Logged my 300th flying hour today, somewhere over the Java Sea enroute from Ujung Pandang/Makassar to KL.

The weather was beautiful for a change, almost clear sky with the sun reflecting in the sea. Ujung Pandang looks like a lovely place to go on a diving holiday - we saw loads of reefs and tiny islands off the coast. Another place on my must-see-more-than-the-airport list.

The arrival was quite "fun" as well, a visual approach for runway 31 which involves flying between some rather high hills not 300ft above their tops. Although the Captain was flying I was far too busy looking for the runway and talking to ATC to take a picture unfortunately.

I just noticed I wrote this post backwards. Nevermind.

S.