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.

Happy Holidays

I quite like flying around big holidays, the knowledge that I'm bringing families and friends together makes the job that much nicer and as my family and close friends are all very very very very far away being in an aeroplane is the next best thing.

It's quite interesting how a tiny detail can make (or break) someone's day. I swapped my regular pilot cap for a more festive alternative and the amount of smiles it created was truly amazing. Rampers who usually rush about took a few seconds to give me a thumbs-up from outside, the cabin crew had something to gossip and laugh about and the passengers were most amused. If everyone did a little something to make others smile the would could be such a nicer place.

A Christmas card I made very quickly for you all. Took the picture today en-route to Singapore, the aeroplane wanted to wear the hat too.

As the card says, happy holidays where ever you are...

S.

Curfews

We departed KK for K-L about 2 and a half hours later than planned, at about 1930 local. The aircraft had thrown a hissy fit the previous night and maintenance wasn't able to sort it out in time for an on time departure the next morning. Not a huge problem for me - I knew well beforehand and arrived suitably late as well.

Now the runway in KK closes every night at 0100 local for "upgrading work" (though honestly I have no idea what they're doing because it just gets bumpier) so we had a last possible departure time from KL of 2230 local and our ETA was 2155. 35 minutes to turn around is more than we need but things would have to be snappy.

And they weren't.

We were sat on the ground for just under an hour due to slow boarding and problematic paperwork of a passenger. As the ground staff did their thing my eye was on the clock: 2215 ... 2230 (cut off!) ... 2235 ... 2240 ... 2245 ... By the time we took off ETA at KK was 0120. Operations gave us the "go" to give it a try - they would contact the airport and beg for an extension - but the whole thing was a bit non-committal. I prepared the flight plan for Brunei just in case and the Captain threw economy out the window and cruised at M0.80 instead of the usual M0.76-78.

We were lucky, we landed at 0107 and the runway was still open. It did make the flight more exciting though, so exciting I caught another cold.

S.

Real weather

Settling in at my new base in Borneo. The letter said I would be here at least 6 months but if I compare the lifestyle here to that of KL there really is no reason to ever leave.

Today was my third and last day, and as a payback for only working 3 in a row I got to do 6 sectors on two of those days. Some people may think all the landings and take-offs are fun but I can honestly say the amount of paperwork versus flying makes it a very very bad deal. The weather today - huge thunderstorms pouring down enough water to flood the sahara desert - didn't help much either.

This thing was sitting over the airport when we left, and an hour and a half later it hadn't gone far. Picture taken from about 60 nautical miles (100km) at FL110.

S.

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.