Captain on A320 for some low cost airline. All opinions and views are my own. Porto/Berlin.
Occasionally aloft
Joined October 2011
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Beautiful weather in Porto but alas I have to work. It was a nice flight to Madeira which has great weather as well, somit was a pleasure to fly the visual approach.
Interesting contrail.
Runway on a bridge.
Parked close to the ocean.
Same aircraft as yesterday, an surprisingly the same FO as well. But today we have to work more. We already flew from Porto to Nantes and back, and now it’s off to the 3-country airport in France.
Loire Estuary approaching Nantes.
Leaving Nantes on the way to Porto.
Just a late flight to Paris Orly and back today. We fly an aircraft which carries a big „Austria“ decal on the fuselage, and we are Austrias biggest airline. But we have no aircraft and no crew based in that country. The wonders of the EU.
„Austria“
Typical Porto rain.
Another long day at Halloween, we flew to Bordeaux and back and now we are in Luxembourg, trying to get back in time to beat the night curfew.
Approaching Paris on our way to LUX.
The city of Paris.
A nice and early flight to Madeira today, first time for me to land on runway 23 but with nearly no wind it was an easy and smooth approach and landing.
Madeira on departure.
Somewhere below that is Porto.
The most boring route ever.
Early morning flight, this time of year we are treated to absolutely stunning sun rises.
Sun rise.
Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds.
The rising sun on the Pyrenees.
Today was nice and easy, out of my standby I got a flight to Nante and back, it was already yesterday in my schedule so I could plan with it. Just 5 hours of work, topped by a fun and fast visual approach back into Porto.
Work on wind energy.
Nante.
Spanish coast.
Another flight to Madeira, today with a CEO and those are not equipped for the more modern approaches. But the weather is very nice so it was easy to fly the RNAV/Visual.
RNAV part
Visual part.
NAV Display presentation.
Passing some weather on our way to Palermo, where I flew an LPV approach which has the exact same minimum as the RNAV approach. I wonder what’s the point there.
Thunderstorm.
The rising Moon.
Some more thunderstorms on the way back.
Just 2 hours of sightseeing in Lisbon. Found a few nice spots. And now it’s off for another 12 hour duty.
I‘m helping out in Lisbon today, sadly my company sent me there fairly early so I had to wait 4 hours in the crew lounge for my flight. Now it’s just a quick flight to Bordeaux and back and then off to the hotel, which is quite unusual for us as we usually stay at home.
Last day of the block, flying with the APU inop to Gatwick and back. Which means we needed an external air starter to start the first engine on the stand. The rest was just the normal single engine taxi without APU.
The NEO automatically increases thrust for engine start, neat!
Another early day, today to Madeira. Uneventful flight and I begin to really like the RNP AR approach, the AR stand for „Authorization Required“. Both the airline and the individual captain has to be authorized to use it.
Leaving the Portuguese coast.
Atlantic ahead.
Reported for a flight to Basel this morning and discovered they changed me on a flight to Palermo.
Had to fly around some thunderstorms over Spain to arrive at an airport with a nice view.
On our way to Funchal today we got a so called expected approach time from ATC. Via the RTA function we updated our FMCG to adjust the speed for that, but we couldn’t fly slow enough. In the end it worked out as the company before us flew the same fast approach as we did.
