Air Europa Leg Series 1

With the end of the week holiday what a great opportunity to finally do a leg series.

Air Europa flight 601 - 602 and 603 were from Paris, Charles de Gaulle airport to Almeria, Spain and back with a stop at Alicante.

Air Europa, if you already don't know operates 737 NGs and is one of my favorite European charter airlines, perfect for flying in and out of Spain.

First leg route

Flight 601 was scheduled for an early morning take-off, like most holiday charter flights, in order to get the folks to their hotels well before noon.

Departure time was 0700 so I set up my flight at 0630 to get the aircraft ready for the first leg. My preflight usually takes around 20 minutes and the extra 10 minutes is for in case any problems arise like a badly written SID/STAR file which will require correction.

This time encountered no problems so I contacted ATC for the IFR clearance at 0650. I started my pushback at 0655.

Morning arrivals at Roissy


Weather at LFPG was winds 283 at 6 with few clouds at 300 and 14C calling for a runway 26R take-off on the ERIXU 1B departure. At LFPG the inner runways are for take-off and the outers for landings. Perfectly easy to replicate in FS.

Ready for boarding


Morning traffic was picking up at Roissy with Air France flights starting their daily schedules to all over Europe.

I had 170 passengers and their luggage on the way to Alicante and Almeria with a fuel load of 22K lbs. Total flight time was estimated at 1 hour and 46 minutes.

Air France 1542 ahead


I fell in behind AF 1542 to runway 26R which is on the south side of the airport. Enroute weather was looking good with no storm cells in my path and a slight tailwind.

Ready to go


The initial climb was mildly bumpy. The airspace over Paris seemed very crowdy with arrivals and departures at Orly as well so instead of flying the whole SID I took a direct route to ERIXU. I believe that's pretty much how they do it in real life as well, I don't think the whole departure or arrival is fully flown that often, fuel and time being important in this business.

The City of Paris


The route took me over Agen which is very close to Toulouse, the Pyrennees mountains, slightly right of Barcelona and over Valencia which I was to start my descent.

Arrival weather was forecasted to be light winds from the northeast and few clouds at 2000 overcast. I set up the FMC for a runway 10 arrival.

Over the Pyrennees


I flew the Astro 1L arrival into Alicante which takes you close to the mountain tops thus providing a lovely view. It would have been very exciting to fly this approach in the dark.

Final for the ILS Z 10


I've noticed in the shots on Airliners.net that Air Europa uses flaps 40 for landings often so I thought I do so too.

Arrival weather hadn't changed much from the report I got enroute.

The Spanair crew are watching


It's trickier to flare and land smoothly with flaps 40 and I think I touched down a bit firm. My flare was a tad too high resulting in a semi stall touch down, a bit on the firm side, slightly bouncing back in the air. Not too much though.

Spanair departure


I planned 30 minutes for each turnaround. It should be enough to reset the FMC and fill in the necessary paperwork. Block time was 1h 58min.

Click here for leg 2 to Almeria

Thanks for viewing