Blagnac

Unless you already know, Blagnac is the name of a calm residential neighborhood in Toulouse, the 4th largest city of France. It's also the name of the city airport which incidentally, is the home of Airbus and Aerospatiale ATR.

Today's flight is from La Ville Rose (Toulouse's other name) LFBO to Algiers, Algeria DAAG. The flight number, AH1045, is a real world Air Algerie flight. Lacking an Air Algerie livery, I did the flight in a Pegasus 738. The Algerian airline wet-leased aircraft from Pegasus in 2005 and PGT aircraft actually flew this 450NM route. (maybe they still do?)

Routefinder generated the following flight plan:

LFBO PUMAL UN859 MOGIL UB31 ZEM DCT DAAG

I had 150 passengers on board with 9000lbs of cargo and 13000lbs of fuel. ZFW was around 127.5K lbs.

After a swift preflight, we're wating for an LH CRJ, we're going to fall in behind it for taxi to the active.


Weather in LFBO was clear skies, 25C with winds 115/5. Naturally, take off is from runway 14L, following a Pumal 5A departure. Cruise altitude is 33000 feet.

LH4383 is lined up and ready to go to Munich.


Here is a real LH 4383 that I flew with on my last trip home on Octobre 2007. I took the picture while waiting for boarding at our gate.


Another cool feature of this add-on aircraft is a panel configuration in which you can select between different modes for forward view. I mostly use two, which are the default and zoomed ones.

Ready to roll, runway 14L. LH4383 is headed to the left.


Climbing over La Garonne. The city center of Toulouse is on the left. My house was very close to that brigde (Pont Saint-Pierre), I used to spot departing and arriving aircraft on my way to school which got me funny looks from my friends! Looks like I caught the strobe too.


I would like to add a note here, if you are not satisfied with your sky textures, if you think your horizon doesn't look good, then maybe, you should call the A-Team! (HAHA)
Seriously, in this case you should try John Cillis' Soft Horizons for FS9 or FSX. It's very simple to install and you will notice the difference immediately.

Turning towards Barcelona, the Pyrenees fill the front view.


I got cleared for VOR runway 27 approach, perfect, just as I had predicted. I couldn't get the ATIS message for DAAG since it doesn't seem to have a frequency according to the Jepp chart. I could have added one with the Afcad program but realism prevailed...

The metar, which I consulted before the flight, for Algiers was 260/06 210V300 with CAVOK conditions and 30C. There shouldn't be any problems.

No STAR here, the published VOR approach to runway 27 starts at navaid ZEM.

Approaching the Algerian coast, beautiful view...


There was some incoming traffic, I love it when the AI are all spaced out, flying their approaches consistently as they should, without flying on top of one another or having to go around , it's rare in FS but it does happen.

Just before intercepting the radial 273 for the ALR VOR, I disconnected the A/P and A/T, the PMDG bird is very fun to handfly and responds very nicely to trimming.

On final rwy27. Usually, I'm a bit too high on non-precision approaches but this one went well.


Parked at gate A3.



On the internet, screen shot forums have their fair share of exterior shots, so in this blog you'll only see one or two per entry. I like exterior views but my simming is mainly in the cockpit. I lean on the technical side of this hobby and although a banking aircraft at sunset looks nice from the outside, I prefer a crappy cockpit shot anyday.

Hmm...I wonder where I should fly next time? Any suggestions?

Thanks for viewing