World Flight 2010 The Art Of Flying - 2009-2011

Menu: Home | Part 1 | Way Back   Part 2: YAYE Ayers Rock, Australia - EPBC, Warsaw, Poland / 15 flights

There are no photos from the previous flights from YAYE to VTBS.   Probably there were many observers who monitored our progress on  this event. Unfortunately during a no-gear landing in YAYE Ayers Rock, our aircraft skidded off the runway causing a lot of damage. During over a year of inactivity the whole aircraft was repaired and upgraded including the engines (turbine instead of piston) and some avionics. It was also painted back to plain silver. There were no point to continue the journey so we decided to fly back to Europe. During first flights (YAYE-YBWX-YPXM-WSSS-VTBS) we experienced some minor and medium failures including engine failures caused by oil overheating after take-off from Ayers Rock and Borrow Island, which forced us to return back on a single engine. Since a second departure from Borrow Island there were no more issues with any systems of the aircraft and we successfully arrived on June 24th at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport in the middle of a night, after crossing the Gulf of Thailand.   Stage 17/back-2 (VTBS Bangkok - VYYY Mingaladon)   After some great two days in Bangkok, which is not so frightening as described in some movies, we took-off on a great sunny day and headed towards the Kamphaeng VOR. In the middle of our flight some turbulences appeared and I had to fasten my seatbelts tight instead of taking pictures from every window. Crossing the mountains was quite bumpy and when we got closed to Yangon, the weather became quite bad - including rain, CB clouds and around 4000ft visibility. I have proceeding the standard ILS approach and landed safely on runway 21. This was probably a good check before the next flight which included VNKL Lukla again - one of the most dangerous airports in the world.     Stage 18/back-2 (VYYY Mingaladon - VNKL Lukla)   We took-off in the night. There is something magical about night cities from birds-eye view... and a perfect sound of two turbine engines providing our Beechcraft, fully loaded with fuel, an initial climb rate of 3000ft/m. Soon after leaving Yangon, which I have described in detail in the Part 1 of this blog, we headed towards TD NDB, located on the coast of the Bay of Bengal (which is a continuation of the Indian Ocean). The mountains on the right and water on the left made this part of the rout very scenic and romantic, especially when the sun started to rise. It was already a day when we entered the Bangladesh aerospace heading towards the megacity capital of this country - Dhaka, with a population of over 12 million. It is the 9th largest city in the world and approximately 400,000 cycle rickshaws run there each day. Unfortunately we did not see them from our cruise flight level 200 and after passing the Buriganga River we flew towards Biratnagar, a sub metropolitan city in south east Nepal (second largest after Kathmandu) beautifully located next to the dangerous Koshi river due to its often floods. Instead of a single well-defined channel, the river has numerous interlacing channels that shift laterally over the fan from time to time. Without sufficient channelisation, floods spread out very widely. The record flow of 24 200 m³/s is equivalent to water a meter deep and more than 24 km, flowing down the slight slope of the alluvial fan at one meter per second. On 18 August 2008, the Kosi river picked up an old channel it had abandoned over 100 years ago previously near the border with Nepal and India. Approximately 2.7 million people were reported affected as the river broke its embankment at Kusaha in Nepal, thus submerging several districts of Nepal and India. 95% of total flow of the Koshi was reported flowing through the new course. As we were approaching Nepal, the beautifully amazing shape of Himalayas appeared on the horizon just in front of our Duke. Right after some scattered clouds started to form around FL100 which was absolutely not good for us as our destination airport was located at that altitude and clouds could make the visual approach impossible or too dangerous to proceed. After a few minutes I got a response from the Lukla staff that I shouldn't worry and they are waiting for us. Well, no problem, but weather had no mercy. As we were descending, the FL100 cloud layer was already an overcast hiding those dangerous peaks below. Here is when I did a bad mistake over the Wapsa Khani village, which could ended up much worse than it did. I mistaken the valleys. Instead of taking the proper one, I chosen the one which was more eastern (the correct one was covered by a cloud) and suddenly found myself in high Himalayas with no space for making a turn back. The only way was to continue climbing and searching for a place wide enough. We had to climb at over 15.000ft to find a good place for a 180-degree turn. This is an awful feeling when the terrain goes up and up, engines are running at their limits but you are coming closer to a forest and rocks below anyway... Not recommended. After that, with a bit shaking hands, we went back down to 10.000ft and found the airport very quickly. The video below shows the landing itself. Actually it is not so difficult as everyone say!       Stage 19/back-2 (VNKL Lukla - OPRN Islamabad)     Stage 20/back-2 (OPRN Islamabad - OIII Teheran)     Stage 21/back-2 (OIII Teheran - UGTB Tbilisi)     Stage 22/back-2 (UGTB Tbilisi - LOWI Innsbruck)     Stage 23/back-2 (LOWI Innsbruck - EPLL Lodz)