A hop to South America

[LH340fan 54]

Time to fly again. Lots of time free, no school, no homework... Why not going long haul?

My 777 was already full of dust, and needed some workout afterall...

My route was planned: AF228 from Paris to Buenos Aires.

 

So we're at stand K44, in our 777, and have about two hours for preparation. I'm pilot flying, so I do the turnaround. the bird arrived about three hours ago from BOS.

Checking pitots, probes, engines, tyres for any damage...

GE90s are such massive engines!!

2200Z, time to board the souls and mail. We have 237 today, as well as mashed potatoes and red wine for dinner.

Boarding was QUICK. Must be due to using two jetways. Everything on time and no pax missing.

About 15min later, we pushed back from our stand. Weather is poor but not so bad, with fog at about 1500ft. Garry was as always there to help us. We'd taxi to 09R after then.

A spotter even took pics of my plane when spooling the engines!

Engines started veery quickly, and indeed we still got some delay, but nothing out of the ordinary, just 5 minutes due to slot times. We taxied, and took off at 2235Z. As my colleague had a GoPro, he put it on my head and so we have some footage for you folks:

 

The climb was steep,about 3300ft/min, until we got to FL340. It was a calm, cozy ride with the wine being served and the potatoes with beef being eaten along. At 0300Z I got out the flight deck for some sleep. On the same day, a bit later, at 1000Z it was time for me to go and fly this puppy again. I got orange juice as well as coffee and croissants for breakfast. Sun is rising and we're over the jungle, in Brazil, having just passed Fortaleza.

We then started our descent, with a quite bad weather.

Arrival was foggy, and rainy. We were on approach for RWY 15 i think. I was lazy to turn wipers on as it'd look silly with no rainmaker nor trueglass stuff.

Landing wasn't bad at all (-195), as you can't flare this thing much.

We got to terminal 2, and deboarded our souls, just on-time

And I just did a tour of the bird one more time before I come back as pilot monitoring.

 

It was a TON of fun and as a 14h trip i'm more than happy.

Cheers! Charly

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Nice, but where is the Rio scenery, isn't it breathtaking?

John

[LH340fan 54]

13 hours ago, John_Cillis said:

Nice, but where is the Rio scenery, isn't it breathtaking?

John

SBGL or SBSP? There's one for short and long haul.

I have SBSP, and the approach is more than dangerous! No ILS, a short runway (1100ish meters I think) and water at both ends. Flew there twice, failed once.