I guess this is where the adventure begins. We were scheduled to depart Wiener Neustadt at 7:15 UTC or 9:15 local, so an early breakfast was called for and most of the crews were up for breakfast early. It was a last chance to go through any paperwork for the flight and ask any questions. We all slowly arrived at the airport which was about 10 minutes walk from the hotel in a shuttle of cars. The temperature was already creeping onto the “hot and sticky” area of the thermometer and no one fancied the walk dragging their luggage and armfuls of maps and approach plates. Hans and the daughter of one of the other pilots did a splendid job of ferrying us the short hop to the airport.

Luggage loaded.....

We had already stuck on the huge stickers depicting the route round the world on the aircraft and just needed to remove the final few bubbles… if time permitted.

We were one of the last crews to arrive and every one was removing covers and stowing luggage. A number of family members of some of the crews had turned up to see there loved ones depart and the flight line was looking quite busy. All the crews had been given polo shirts and red baseball caps ( pilots DO like uniforms after all!) and it must have looked an amazing site to some of the other people at the airport to see us all walking about with bright red hats on. At least we didn’t have to wear hi visibility jackets wearing these hats.

One of the planes had not arrived, it was delayed in Berlin due to technical hitch and would catch us up on Monday or Tuesday.

Flight Line...... before the off

Everyone was taking photos ( I guess my fees were to high!) and wishing each other good luck and ” See you in Istanbul” was being shouted to other crews in various languages. One huge advantage with flying is that English is the common language between us all and we could all converse with relative ease… that is easy for me to say…. being English, and also hi-lights just how bad I am at attempting any language ( French, German, in fact any language spoken with a south Lancashire accent is not pleasant on the ear!) Because of the 3 minute stagger between each aircraft, ATC wanted the fastest aircraft away first, I guess ATC didn’t want the hassle of vectoring 10 aircraft with a speed range from 120 knots to 190 knots around each other. We were in the 4th aircraft away behind one of the other Bonanza’s – G-ZLOJ of Will Grey and Mike Start from the UK. At 9:10 we started up and taxied out to the hold. At our alloted time, we were cleared to enter the runway and backtrack. The night before, Feroz tossed a coin and asked me to call it. “Heads” – I was flying this leg.

Just a quick interruption here…. I am sat on the balcony of the hotel, overlooking the Sea of Marmara with a wedding in full swing below in the garden of the hotel at midnight and its still hot and sticky in the upper 20’s., and for the record, the bride looked lovely!

The standard crew photo...

OK, as we watched Will & Mike in the Bonanza in front of us climb away, Feroz said he looked slow climbing, we watched as they made a slow turn left onto there heading and  we were given clearance to enter and backtrack, I said I would use the starter extension and taxied right to the very end of the runway and turned lining up with the centre line. Brakes on….” N722P cleared for take off” Hold her on the breaks, 2000 RPM breaks off and advance the throttle as we rolled….. at last, we were on our way!

The climb was shallow, but not too shallow to be a problem, Feroz keeping an eye on the temperatures of the cylinders and oil and as the gear lifted off the ground, I selected “Gear Up”. Normally you leave the gear down a little longer, but at 200 feet we had to start a gentle left turn to avoid a military area a few hundred yards passed the end of the runway.

As we turned onto our heading, the tower handed us over to ATC and we were cleared to 3000 feet. Within a couple of

Flight Level 100

minuets we were approaching 3000 feet and were given clearance to climb to FL110, 11,000 feet but asked to do a 360 turn to the left for traffic spacing.

Thats all for the moment, its an early start in the morning, so I’ll post part 2 later.

As usual, resume own navigation and watch for traffic.

S