Under the stars

Position is somewhere over the South China Sea at FL370, cruising along M758 homeward bound. The Captain has just left the flight deck to go chat up the girls in the back and I'm left alone with the night. And what a night.

The instrument lighting is down as far as it will go, the screens are as dim as they'll go and all flood lighting is off. Outside the moon is painting everything a slightly eerie silver.

There is a distant thunderstorm spitting lighting off to the right (annoying someone else no doubt) but the weather ahead is smooth and clear.

I can just make out the blink-blink of the strobe lights of a company Bus going the other way 1000ft above. A few seconds later it whizzes past and the sky is motionless again. Up above I can just make out a million stars competing with the moon.

It's moments like these that make me love flying - despite the stupid paperwork and 25 minute turnarounds - and convince me that the best view on earth really is at thirty something thousand feet.

S.

Taipei Landing

I flew the post-inaugural flight to Taipei on Saturday. The route was launched the previous day with the Chief Pilot of the base flying the company's newest A320 for the occasion. We got a slightly-less-new A320 and set off for what still felt a bit like a pioneering expedition.

The only noteworthy occurrence was ATC's relative ignorance of our callsign. They came up with some very interesting variations...

A video of the final approach in slightly hazy conditions. Taipei has one of the bumpiest runways I have ever landed on.

S.

Mt. Kinabalu

Today was probably the nicest day I have had so far weather-wise. We departed 10 minutes early for the short hop to Sandakan in a completely totally clear sky, with only a hint of morning ground fog. The view of Borneo and Mt. Kinabalu was spectacular ... and typically I left my camera at home.

My mobile phone is equipped with a "camera" so I used it to try and capture as best I could this unique moment of seeing the mountain completely clear of cloud. I'm afraid the pictures don't really do justice to the savage beauty of the scene.

Mt. Kinabalu taken from the South, on approach to Kota Kinabalu.

And again taken on departure from K-K with the harbour in the front.

A few hours later I was landing in drizzly wet and comparatively chilly (17°) Shenzhen. Visibility was just 3000m and we broke out of cloud at 500ft AGL. The mandarin ATC was just as spooky as it was last time I flew to China a few months ago.

The clouds had built up to obscure the mountain for our second arrival into KK but the airfield was still clear and we executed a light-aircraft style visual approach over the water. Proof that flying big jets isn't always about autopilots and fancy automatic landing systems.

S.