Pescaito Frito and Bordeaux Wine

DHL flight 1001 took me from Malaga, Spain (LEMG) to the famous wine region of Bordeaux in France (LFBD). I didn't know whether to use an Air Europa NG or the 757F which I flew with before. I chose the 757, well, because I felt like flying the mighty 757 and a reader commented that he (or she) had a penchant for the DHL flights on this blog. I hope you like this one too, buddy.

LEMG and LFBD are both new in my FS destinations so I took a close look at the departures and arrivals as well as the airport layouts for taxing. This is one of the most interesting and fun aspects of FS in my opinion, I take great pleasure in paging through the Jepp charts of unfamiliar airports prior to flying there.

I don't like to use progressive taxi so I study the airport diagrams while doing my preflight, others like to start on the active runway, FS provides for all tastes.

This is the route I entered in the CDU:

LEMG GENNI DCT RBO UN867 DGO UL176 SSN UP181 BTZ UM615 ENSAC LFBD

For this 550NM route flown at a cruise altitude of 35000, I loaded 25K lbs of fuel. ZFW was 168.6K lbs, a medium load for this aircraft.

LEMG was clear skies, calm winds and 29C, in other words, a lovely spanish summer day.

ATIS read runway 14 was in use, accordingly, I went for a Genni 1A departure.

My Jepp charts have the runway as 13-31 so I guess there has been a runway number change, no problem though, everything looked fine on the ND.

Yup, rwy 14, right turn


I had a nice steady flow of traffic at LEMG consisting mostly of Spanair and Air Europa AI. My 10 minute or so taxi took me past the main terminal area.

Take-off roll, flaps 15 take-off


Initial climbout is very steep in the 757, everything happens very fast, selecting the appropriate modes, turning off the landing lights, contacting the ATC...etc No wonder there are 2 pilots in real life!

Climbing out of Malaga, over the Spanish coast, lots of folks enjoying their afternoon meal of fried seafood down there!


I flew over San Sebastian and Biarritz on the way.

Look at the weather radar. Yikes! Luckily though in FS you don't need to avoid the storms


Despite all that yellow and magenta return there wasn't much turbulence...?

FS ATC once again agreed with my descent planning and gave me an initial descent to FL190 right at the TOD computed by the CDU. I had planned an Ensac 4 arrival, around 70NM out I received clearance for the ILS runway 23. Just a few more entries into the legs page and the arrival route is set.

Turning to intercept the localizer for runway 23


Right before intercepting the localizer I tuned into the ATIS frequency, winds 224/8, visibility 6 miles and 24C at LFBD.

Below 8000 feet, the ride was bumpy and stayed that way all the way down.

Final approach, A/P and A/T disconnect please


My landing was pretty good, I think I touched down with my left main gear first, like I said above though, the final approach was bumpy and required corrections, it was quite fun actually!

On the ramp, unloading the cargo of Chorizo sausages, pilots already preparing for the next leg


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