Best/most scenic Routes to Fly.

[Gregg_Seipp 565]

My two favorite approaches have been:

• The GPS or VOR Rwy 25 at Santa Barbara KSBA.  The first time I did it was in FSX years ago in the J41 and I was just stunned with how pretty it was coming in at night...the town, the lights, the mountains.  I flew it again just recently and I still love it.  P3D and XPlane as well.  It's just gorgeous.
• Just coming in over the mountains from the north over LFMN in P3D.  I didn't know it was the Riviera at the time.  I just remember looking almost straight down at the mountains below, thinking to myself "this has to be one of the most beautiful places in the entire world."  

I'm looking forward to trying some of these that people are mentioning.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

16 minutes ago, Gregg_Seipp said:

My two favorite approaches have been:

• The GPS or VOR Rwy 25 at Santa Barbara KSBA.  The first time I did it was in FSX years ago in the J41 and I was just stunned with how pretty it was coming in at night...the town, the lights, the mountains.  I flew it again just recently and I still love it.  P3D and XPlane as well.  It's just gorgeous.
• Just coming in over the mountains from the north over LFMN in P3D.  I didn't know it was the Riviera at the time.  I just remember looking almost straight down at the mountains below, thinking to myself "this has to be one of the most beautiful places in the entire world."  

I'm looking forward to trying some of these that people are mentioning.

I loved the approach I made into Canaima National Park near Angel Falls in Venezuela way back in 1990 when it was easier for an American like me to teach and take time off in that country.  I have been asked to go back there to help the Venezuelan government with Information Technology and tourism issues recently, but I told them I cannot with the flux they have in their country. 

Anyway I found the approach into that southern part of Venezuela breathtaking.  I flew from Barcelona on Venezuela's northern coast, a stopover from my origin with our air tour, which I thought was a Cessna but on recent study learned was a Navajo Chieftain.  Some time after takeoff from San Jose, as we climbed to a cruising altitude of 10,000 feet (and I could feel the altitude in the unpressurized aircraft), we started passing over what looked like a huge inland sea....

It was first Ciudad Bolivar then the mighty Orinoco river.  Just earlier in that year, before I knew I was going to make the trip, Enya's song Orinoco flow became popular and on other biz trips, I'd listen to the music channel it would be playing, as if I was programmed to see Angel falls and that beautiful part of the world that year.  And that is exactly what I was programmed to do, none of my colleagues wanted to go with me to Venezuela, we had heard from my prior colleague that he had a hellish time, he called it a place where drug lords vacationed, Margarita Island, and us gringos were hated. 

But that was not my experience, I feel there is something about pilots that instantly identifies us as world diplomats whether we tell someone of what we do in tourism or not, and my niche in professional flying was teaching tourism systems at hotels, which evolved out of airline reservation systems, the airlines were the chicken that made so many other guest service systems possible, even retail store systems, because they relied on customer preference retained in their system to attract repeat business in a competitive and often cutthroat market.

Anyway me and my colleague who did have the courage to join me, Mary, were treated like royalty from the resort we were there to help train, and from the locals who saw us like diplomats as word spread that two gringos had come to teach the tourism folks on the island of Margarita.  So on my day off, I believe I just had one or two although our clients never made us work past six hours, they were so laid back, I flew with some friends I had made on an air tour to Angel Falls leaving my colleague behind to work.  She was not quite the mountain goat I was and we were warned once in Canaima we would have to do some serious hiking, barefooted, so as not to fall into the Piranha and who knows what else infested river with a better grip on the more slippery parts of the trail. 

I slipped anyway, falling about ten feet thinking of those little chompers just waiting to get my toes which went an inch into the water--then I was outta of there with that realization like George of the Jungle as my laughing native tour guides knew what they had seen then came to me with some bandages for the minor cuts I had all over my legs and feet from slipping over the coral like wet rock.  That was the closest I ever came to flying, I feel, but the slope was just enough to let me out of the water again, being about 75 degrees as my hands did the rest and got me out.

I believe other than my being run over by that SUV on what is now one week ago, that fall was my worst fall in my life and I still have subtle scars crisscrossing my feet and lower legs from it.  I was told I was quite the champ for not forcing an early end to the tour given I was hurting, but the scenery was just too breathtaking to miss.  Angel Falls is not just a tall waterfall, in fact when I came late summer it was just a trickle, we had to fly by to see it, not much to look at.  There are dozens of other waterfalls, it is a mix of rainforest, and the head rush you get being around rain forest pumping out so much oxygen.  Then there are the other worldly Tepui's, those flat topped mountains that have rain forests on top of them, one of which bears Angel Falls.

The Margarita/Venezuela/Angel Falls/Caracas trip of 1990 was my most memorable series of flights around another continent, South America, which came because it was my job to say yes, I will go there, when I was told to go there, and because it turned out to evolve from a business trip to what my former colleague and still good friend Mary call the best vacation we ever had before we had our own families.  It made us close, in a brother sister way, even more so because I was Christian and Mary Jewish, and our religious beliefs were opened a little wider than most when we were exposed to how the natives in the America's still choose to simply live, and we accepted their hospitality and culture because that is what tourism people do, and hopefully most tourists do as well.

So, try the route--Margarita, stop in Barcelona for fuel, use Ciudad Bolivar as your final waypoint, then on to Canaima.

Another route off the northern coast of South America is Caracas to Margarita, with majestic mountain peaks rising off the starboard side of the aircraft used, usually a twin engine jet like a 737 or Airbus....

John

[Gregg_Seipp 565]

4 hours ago, John_Cillis said:

I loved the approach I made into Canaima National Park near Angel Falls in Venezuela way back in 1990 when it was easier for an American like me to teach and take time off in that country.  I have been asked to go back there to help the Venezuelan government with Information Technology and tourism issues recently, but I told them I cannot with the flux they have in their country. 

Anyway I found the approach into that southern part of Venezuela breathtaking.  I flew from Barcelona on Venezuela's northern coast, a stopover from my origin with our air tour, which I thought was a Cessna but on recent study learned was a Navajo Chieftain.  Some time after takeoff from San Jose, as we climbed to a cruising altitude of 10,000 feet (and I could feel the altitude in the unpressurized aircraft), we started passing over what looked like a huge inland sea....

It was first Ciudad Bolivar then the mighty Orinoco river.  Just earlier in that year, before I knew I was going to make the trip, Enya's song Orinoco flow became popular and on other biz trips, I'd listen to the music channel it would be playing, as if I was programmed to see Angel falls and that beautiful part of the world that year.  And that is exactly what I was programmed to do, none of my colleagues wanted to go with me to Venezuela, we had heard from my prior colleague that he had a hellish time, he called it a place where drug lords vacationed, Margarita Island, and us gringos were hated. 

But that was not my experience, I feel there is something about pilots that instantly identifies us as world diplomats whether we tell someone of what we do in tourism or not, and my niche in professional flying was teaching tourism systems at hotels, which evolved out of airline reservation systems, the airlines were the chicken that made so many other guest service systems possible, even retail store systems, because they relied on customer preference retained in their system to attract repeat business in a competitive and often cutthroat market.

Anyway me and my colleague who did have the courage to join me, Mary, were treated like royalty from the resort we were there to help train, and from the locals who saw us like diplomats as word spread that two gringos had come to teach the tourism folks on the island of Margarita.  So on my day off, I believe I just had one or two although our clients never made us work past six hours, they were so laid back, I flew with some friends I had made on an air tour to Angel Falls leaving my colleague behind to work.  She was not quite the mountain goat I was and we were warned once in Canaima we would have to do some serious hiking, barefooted, so as not to fall into the Piranha and who knows what else infested river with a better grip on the more slippery parts of the trail. 

I slipped anyway, falling about ten feet thinking of those little chompers just waiting to get my toes which went an inch into the water--then I was outta of there with that realization like George of the Jungle as my laughing native tour guides knew what they had seen then came to me with some bandages for the minor cuts I had all over my legs and feet from slipping over the coral like wet rock.  That was the closest I ever came to flying, I feel, but the slope was just enough to let me out of the water again, being about 75 degrees as my hands did the rest and got me out.

I believe other than my being run over by that SUV on what is now one week ago, that fall was my worst fall in my life and I still have subtle scars crisscrossing my feet and lower legs from it.  I was told I was quite the champ for not forcing an early end to the tour given I was hurting, but the scenery was just too breathtaking to miss.  Angel Falls is not just a tall waterfall, in fact when I came late summer it was just a trickle, we had to fly by to see it, not much to look at.  There are dozens of other waterfalls, it is a mix of rainforest, and the head rush you get being around rain forest pumping out so much oxygen.  Then there are the other worldly Tepui's, those flat topped mountains that have rain forests on top of them, one of which bears Angel Falls.

The Margarita/Venezuela/Angel Falls/Caracas trip of 1990 was my most memorable series of flights around another continent, South America, which came because it was my job to say yes, I will go there, when I was told to go there, and because it turned out to evolve from a business trip to what my former colleague and still good friend Mary call the best vacation we ever had before we had our own families.  It made us close, in a brother sister way, even more so because I was Christian and Mary Jewish, and our religious beliefs were opened a little wider than most when we were exposed to how the natives in the America's still choose to simply live, and we accepted their hospitality and culture because that is what tourism people do, and hopefully most tourists do as well.

So, try the route--Margarita, stop in Barcelona for fuel, use Ciudad Bolivar as your final waypoint, then on to Canaima.

Another route off the northern coast of South America is Caracas to Margarita, with majestic mountain peaks rising off the starboard side of the aircraft used, usually a twin engine jet like a 737 or Airbus....

John

What a story.  Man, I love this thread.

Gregg

[Chock 17,769]

Coincidentally, after I mentioned a flight which is a challenge a little earlier on this thread, not least because it goes over Biscay where the weather can be quite notoriously stormy (TCX1140 Thomas Cook A321 from Manchester to Banul) had to return to MCR tonight after it was struck by lightning over Biscay. The strike put a hole in the fuselage, affecting pressurisation, forcing it to drop down to 23,000 feet. The crew took the decision to turn back to MCR because there isn't much in the way of engineering support for TC airlines at Banjul, whereas there is a TC hangar at MCR with full engineering facilities. It's in that hangar at Manchester now being inspected. Here's the flight track. The aircraft is G-TCDF, an A321-211:

 

Edited March 11, 2019 by Chock

[John_Cillis 2,406]

19 minutes ago, Chock said:

Coincidentally, after I mentioned a flight which is a challenge a little earlier on this thread, not least because it goes over Biscay where the weather can be quite notoriously stormy (TCX1140 Thomas Cook A321 from Manchester to Banul) had to return to MCR tonight after it was struck by lightning over Biscay. The strike put a hole in the fuselage, affecting pressurisation, forcing it to drop down to 23,000 feet. The crew took the decision to turn back to MCR because there isn't much in the way of engineering support for TC airlines at Banjul, whereas there is a TC hangar at MCR with full engineering facilities. It's in that hangar at Manchester now being inspected. Here's the flight track. The aircraft is G-TCDF, an A321-211:

 

I only first saw the Bay of Biscay in real life when I went to Europe in 2017 for my month long, marathon tour there.  We stopped at Biarritz the day after my tour mates celebrated my belated 56th birthday.  It was a funny time to travel to Europe, I was born on 5-21-61 and it was my 56th birthday, a few days after, when I took off for Europe--May 24th I believe, so the numbers 56-1 kind of fell into place and it just seemed the right time to do a bucket list thing and see parts of Europe I had not seen before. 

Trafalgar tours gave me a birthday party a week later, on 5-28-17, that was special because it was my passed Grandma's birthday, my bestest friend, fellow Gemini and fellow appendectomy survivor and as someone who lived on 51st and Damen in Chicago's south side, was scared of no one and taught me to adopt almost the same attitude although I get scared of bit hairy men if I ogle their pretty significant others, lol.  I convinced her as a teen to move from Chicago to Napa to be with us--she came because my Mom had me write to her, my Mom felt I could convince her to move, I was then and still am now known as the "My Cousin Vinny" of the family both because of my ability to detect scams and to reveal the truth with humor, no one was ever able to pull the wool over my eyes and my Grandma felt if I wanted her to come, then she must. 

Anyway I celebrated my 56th birthday in Bordeaux France in 2017 and saw the Bay of Biscay and went to Lovely Lourdes in the Pyrenees the next day.  I did not seek the healing waters there though I could have used them, and I believe in them, I just felt others needed, from what I saw, those waters more than I did and I did not want to waste space.   Instead I meditated in both the lower and upper churches in Lourdes.... 

Thanks for the post and helping me remember my bucket list wish--to see the Atlantique from France and my Norman roots which came via Spain.  It was a pilgrimage to the roots of my paternal family tree, which dates even further back to Judea and Egypt and Africa, with some input from South America and Asia.  I truly consider myself a mongrel or a muggle since I could not use a Harry Potter Portkey to fly to the UK, launching point for my last European trip.  I had to accept BA's non-stop service to and from Phoenix to Heathrow, LOL...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biarritz