Kuwait City to Muscat

This must the second time OOMS is featured in my blog. I remember doing a flight from there to Karachi or vice versa. However, I hadn't done any flying around the Middle East since I got back from my service at the end of January which happens to be one of my favorite flying spots, by the way.

Actually, I was planning on doing a longer flight, something around 3-4 hours but I didn't have the time so I had to come up with a shorter route. The 700NM flight took 1 hour and 58 minutes:

DARVA B416 MUTVI L223 TARDI N629 RAGUD

The story of this review is the following. This in fact is the second leg of the DHL flight which departed EBBR, Belgium initially for Kuwait and then Muscat. After unloading a part of the cargo, the flight was to continue to Muscat, Oman to where the rest of the load was headed. This review will feature the second leg. Flight simulation is always more amusing with a little imagination. Oh, and for those curious about the cargo on board, it was Belgian chocolate!

My take-off weight was 186K lbs with a fuel load of 22.5K lbs.

Take-off roll, 33L


The weather was beautiful at OKBK, a typical Middle Eastern evening, winds 347/7 cavok conditions and 27C. This is what I love about the Mid East (among other things), summer around the year.

I took off from runway 33L and flew the DARVA3C SID to join the B416 airway. Traffic was calm at Kuwait airport, too, company activity mostly with Kuwaiti 743 departing to Riyadh.

Even though the thrust was derated 15%, the 757 climbed easily and smoothly to FL350 in the lovely Mid Eastern weather.

DARVA3C departure


It was getting dark so FS decided to "turn on the lights" just when I was lining up on 33L, great timing actually, I'm a big fan of runway lights. The panel lighting of this add-on is beautiful, too.

The Active Sky Nav Log showed winds aloft blowing stiffly from the Southwest which turned out to be the case and the nice tailwind contributed to the time of the flight.

I few over the Persian Gulf mostly with the Kuwaiti coast and Bahrain to my right and over Dubai. I could see the lights of Iranian cities to my left as well. The skies were clear over the Persian Gulf this evening.

Cruising, note the tailwind


Flight 644 of some airline followed me at FL330 until the UAE and started descending when we got close to Dubai. It then got cleared to 30L, 30L being one of the runways at OMDB so I guess it was heading there.

Approach clearance came at 65NM out forcing me to change my initial planned arrival runway of 08 to 26. The default FS database has the ILS 26 approach via the MCT VOR which I promptly selected as well to prevent vectoring.

A quick ATIS check revealed winds were blowing from the Southwest at 4 knots with a 5NM visibility and 29C. Calm winds are tricky in FS, real life ATC would have cleared me to runway 08 per my arrival route in these conditions, but impossible to simulate this in FS.

Final for the ILS DME 26


My landing was perfect, a greaser to be more precise. I think I'm finally getting there, no wait, the winds were calm so I can't be too sure...
A/P and A/T came off at 1000' and I handflew the approach from there on.

No idea on where to next, so any place can be expected.

Thanks for viewing