11 December. Twenty-fifth leg. Goose Bay-Reykjavik, Iceland 1.361 Nm totalling 15.443 Nm.

December 16, 2018

Though we knew for sure that the previous would haven the coldest outside, we also knew that this would be our longest leg, at least if we would not be obliged to make a stop at Greenland.

All our rescue/emergency material was ready under direct reach of Sophie.

Labrador and New Foundland on the map

Only upon reaching our FBO Irving we got the bad but not unexpected news that Pilatypus did not get a warm bed during the night and looked like an iceball. Fortunately some of the a/c left already the ‘Dutch hangar’. Though we still wonder why we did not get any preference as a Dutch aircraft over and above the Canadian Twin-Otters (I need to have a discussion with the Dutch Airforce prior to making another trip), we readily accepted the offer to have Pilatypus warmed up in the Dutch hangar.


Pilatypus being de-frosted in the Dutch Hangar

 Twin-Otters left over upon our arrival

That took one hour and we would be ready to depart upon having completed the fueling.

Off we were and we started our calculations, repeated every 30 minutes, of fuel consumption, fuel ROB [Remaining On Board; believe this is more a shipping than an aviation expression] distance to go etc etc.


Leaving Goose Bay via North Atlantic (Greenland), direction Reykjavik

It went well and on each 30 minutes calculation we found having some 10 Lbs fuel more on than Andy’s calculated fugures.

When we got closer to the South edge of Greenland we started to look carefully at the ETOPS calculation, saying what would the best airfield to divert to, in case of an emergency, based upon the latest wind predictions of that morning. Have a look please:

Then our last 3,5 hours would start. Closer to Iceland the weather became rather unfriendly ánd it did become dark. It became a long trip, look at my feet.

As I rembered from previous trip the weather upon arrival at Reykjavik became really bad with wind gusts of 40 knots.

As Urs put it is simple words ‘es war brutal’. Anyhow we made it, hurried to our hotel and took a good dinner in ROK.

This was our longest flight, both in distance and time: 05:24

Post by Harry Heijst | December 16, 2018 |