Hi, everybody!

Today I went on a longhaul flight with the AS A330 and wrote a tripreport about it.

DLH 594 EDDF/FRA (Frankfurt am Main/Germany) -> DNAA/ABV (Abuja/Nigeria) Airbus Industrie A330-300 D-AIKO, MSN 989

While we are just getting to our aircraft, the handler is already loading the food for the almost 6 hours flight into the Airbus.

While the IRS is alligning, we can take a look at the OFP.
Here is a short overview for the air traffic controllers:

We take off on Frankfurts Runway 25C, then turn south to follow the ANEKI departure. From there, we actually just continue south, across the Black Forest, the Swiss and Italian Alps, Genoa, then across the Mediterranean Sea, passing Corsica and Sardinia towards Algeria. There we pass the Atlas Mountains, the cities of Constantine and El Oued, between Tamanrasset and Djanet further towards Niger. There we continue via Agadez and the former capital Zinder to Nigeria, where we fly over the city of Kano in the north. Then we start the approach to the 22 of Abuja.

We'll take 40 tons of fuel with us. That is already well calculated, only about 31.5 tons are needed for the flight itself. But you never know how the thunderstorms will be over Nigeria, so an additional reserve will not hurt.

Time to have a look around the plane. But all good, there is even time for a small photo:

As we are unfortunately still in the middle of the Corona crisis, we don't have many passengers with us, only 153, but we can take a bit more freight with us, 23.7 tons. This brings us to ZFW of 162 t, which is quite a lot for the A330.

In the meantime the boarding is almost finished and we are picking up our IFR clearance. A little bit surprising we get the RWY 18, and not the 25C. But good, it is quickly changed.
After the boarding is completed, we also get the Pushback Clearance and are (almost) on time. From stand A50 we are allowed to push a pretty good bit up to N7:

Meanwhile we start the engines, so that we can taxi to runway 18 without delay after pushback. We haven't even been to the holding point yet, they told us:
"Lufthansa 594, wind 160 at 6, Runway 18, clear for takeoff!"

And of course you don't have to be told twice, let's go!

At a Vr of 165 kts we take off, Positive Climb, Gear Up!

The climbout from Frankfurt was a bit boring because of clouds. Over Switzerland, however, the clouds have cleared up and a great alpine panorama was to be seen:

But also some minutes later, over Italy, everything was full of clouds again.

After not even 2 hours in the flight we reached the African mainland, here a picture over Algeria, shortly after we flew over the third largest city of Algeria - namely Constantine:

... After that, nothing comes except of sand for the time being: The Sahara.

After some time clouds come up again, the ground becomes a bit greener and looks more inhabited again. A good time to enter our approach to the MCDU. As planned it will be the RWY 22 in Abuja, will be a really nice and comfortable approach. The outside temperature is 32°C, so it will be really pleasant...

Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, has 2.7 million inhabitants and is located northwest of the airport. The airport...
Wait, we just started our descent.

The airport has 2 terminals and handles about 2 million passengers per year - it is the second largest airport in Nigeria after Lagos. It has a runway which is 3600 meters long, more than enough for our A330:

And as we sink through the clouds, the landscape becomes greener and greener:

And then we are already on the ILS, which leads us to runway 22:
Flaps one - flaps two - gear down!

Approx. 2000 ft AGL we come out of the clouds and the airport is already in sight in the distance!

Well, and with soft -103 fpm we bring our A330 also on the ground! Unfortunately there are still no really good airports for Accra, Lagos, Abjua, & co, so unfortunately only the default P3D and GSX flair...

Yeah, that's it from my side again! I hope you enjoyed the flight again!

Many greetings
Matthias

Matthias:

Great-looking pictures of your trip-report, here, with this AS 330...(always a bit biassed towards LH,...🙂...one of my favorite Airlines...have travelled umpteen times with it, especially the A330-300, which was quite typical for (Chicago-Frankfurt) Route...along with their A340...brings back good memories from the past...)...

BTW, liked the (overlaid) pop-ups of Fuel Sheet and Approach Chart....

Thanks for the post...!!

Awesome....really like the custom edited shots with charts etc!

Thank you all! 😃