Holiday Flight

I had absolutely no idea about where to fly this morning. I sat in front of my computer for 30 minutes or so browsing this airline site (Al sent me the link, btw) to find a route for my Saturday afternoon flight, really nothing seemed appealing. I first thought of EHAM - LTBS with Transavia but then EDDH - LTBS seemed better with TUI because my PMDG Transavia livery is an old one and I was too lazy to look up the new repaint.

As you might know, Dalaman is a famous holiday destination (along with Antalya) in Turkey which attracts many tourists from Europe, especially Germany hence the flight from Hamburg.

Flight X3 115 is a real world flight number but the actual flight will be starting on June 14th per the Tui website.

Also, as you aviation buffs probably know, the volcanic ash cloud has suspended all the flights over Europe right know for obvious reasons but in the perfect world of FS, of course, everything is fine and there are no canceled flights.

EDDH weather was clear skies and winds blowing from the Southwest with 8C calling for a runway 23 departure following the Amluh 4B SID. Traffic was dense, many German operators coming and going. Just as I was getting ready to get my IFR clearance I heard "1662" over the net. Turkish Airlines 1662 is one of the daily flights from Hamburg to Istanbul. I looked left and right to catch a glimpse of it and just to my right I saw the distinctive red tail as the 321 was pushing back. It's always a pleasure to see our national carrier not only in real life but in FS as well.

Turkish 1662 to Istanbul pushing back

After a bumpy initial climb I continued on my route which took me over the Czech Rep., Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece after which I entered Turkish airspace and started my descent just after passing the city of Izmir.

LH 4791 coming in

My flight has quite loaded, packed full with tourists on their way to the various resorts around Dalaman. My GW was around 150K resulting in a long take-off roll to hit the necessary rotation speed.

"V1!"

As soon as I reached my cruise altitude of 36000 feet and got the handoff to the next center (which I didn't contact) I let the aircraft fly by itself while I kept myself occupied with online COD MW2, completing the various challenges for the online profile. Talk about awesome IFE!

Just as I flew over the IMR VOR, I got the initial descending instructions by the ATC which seemed correct according to the FMC so I followed them. After a while on the KEKIK 1G star I got my clearance to the ILS 01 via the DAL VOR, just as I had initially planned.

Lovely view into Dalaman

The approach was rather bumpy into LTBS, ATIS read surface winds 194 at 5 with clear skies and 24C, beautiful spring weather at Dalaman. Actually, I was a bit disapointed that runway 19 wasn't in use, it has a challenging VOR DME approach.

Short final runway 01

My landing was OK but I wasn't quite good at handflying the approach this time, as you can see in the above shot. I came in a tad too high and touched down a bit late but slowed down without any problems on autobrakes 2 and no reversers. Flaring is definitely trickier with flaps 40.

Have a nice holiday

To be honest I wasn't all that excited about this route, it was just an ordinary one... My girlfriend came up with a great idea for setting up my future flights. She told me that I should fly to or from the newest visitor country on my blog. Hmm... Not a bad idea, not bad at all...

Danke shoen for viewing