Gdansk to Naples

This flight is from Gdansk, Poland to Naples, Italy. I came up with this route because I love the 2 airport sceneries involved, they are among the best freewares and both are must-haves if you use FS 2004.

The 980NM flight took me over central Europe and the Balkans into Italy from the East. I flew with the very cool Neos 738W. I don't know if Neos operates this route in real life but I love this livery so I decided to take it out of the hanger for this review.

Block time for NO4435 was 2 hours and 20 minutes.

My ZFW was 121K lbs with a fuel load of 25K lbs.

EPGD weather wasn't very pleasant. Winds were 298/15, visibility 6 miles with few clouds at 1300 and 4500. Temperature was 17C. I could hear the thunder on the ramp doing my preflight.

Parked at stand C8, ready for push and start

The Gdansk scenery features service vehiculs which you can activate by selecting certain NAV frequencies.

As I was pushed back, an LH CRJ was heading for Germany and departed just before me. Knowing I had to backtrack the runway, I waited for the CRJ after pushback while taking the opportunity to contemplate this beautiful scenery.

De-icing? No thank you, maybe in a few months...


After the backtrack on runway 29, I took off and headed directly to my initial fix which was the KRT VOR. There are no SIDs for this airport.

I love the runway and taxiway textures here, payware quality yet free.

Rwy 29, ready to go


Strong turbulence hit me as soon as I took off and continued upto 20000 feet. The aircraft had a hard time maintaining climb speed.

Even at higher altitudes the clouds were still pretty dense and contributed generously to the bouncing and shaking of my 737.

Climbing out of Gdansk, plenty of clouds


Cruise flight was uneventful, lots of European callsigns on the net, a couple of Asian heavies too.

Thankfully, I had a nice tailwind which decreased the flight time.

As runway 24 at LIRN was closer to my arrival route, I initially planned my arrival for that one. At 90 or so miles out, FS ATC cleared me to runway 06. No problem, I did the necessary changes in the FMC and tried to set my descent correctly despite the wind direction changes. Another downside was the long downwind leg.

I hesitated between the ILS approach and the VOR one. I decided on the ILS because I wanted to test the offset localizer.
Before my flight I rewrote the procedure file for Naples as I wasn't satisfied with my current one. I flew the SOR 2D arrival for an ILS runway 06 approach.

I think the reason for the slight offset is a hill which sits on the runway course. You fly very close to it on final approach.

Final for 06, note the offset localizer, the hill is on the left side of the aircraft


At 1000 feet, I went manual and flew the glide slope by hand. I will try the VOR approach next time.

LIRN was clear skies, winds 099/7 and 30C, a beautiful summer day in Naples.

Very short final, this scenery is lovely


I touched down a bit late, though smoothly, and vacated the runway at the far end. Flaring with flaps 40 is defintely trickier than with flaps 30.

I'm planning on departing from Capodichino to another secondary European airport on my next flight.

Thank you for viewing