TWL0408-10 CYYR-EFHK

[CBreuer]

Hi guys.

Another cargo flight is due to be flown today and this flight will lead us from Goose Bay, where we arrived yesterday, to Helsinki Vantaa. We will be hauling a load of fresh salmon which is almost a classic load for this region here.
It was well still during the night as e arrived at the airport, preflighted the MD-11F and finally started to taxi out to RWY 26 again.
   
   
   

Takeoff was uneventful as was the initial cruise to the first waypoint LOACH followed by 5850N OZN 6140N 6330N EMBLA KEF and from there on we were able to use 'real' airways: G3 VALDI UN623 GRM UP607 LINSA UN873 TUNUS and from there we followed the RNAV START LAKUT1R for an ILS approach to RWY 04R, but more about the approach later...

Our initial cruising altitude was FL350 and we stayed there until we had passed LOACH + about 40 NM until we requested the higher level of FL370. In the meantime we had the opportunity to watch a real great sunrise for quite some time.
   
   

Then near OZN we crossed the south tip of Greenland.
   

Then again we got closer to Iceland and quicker as I thought we were already over it and I missed Keflavik airport.
   
   
   

Then all of a sudden we were over Scandinavia and had been cleared for the LAKUT1R RNAV approach to RWY 04R. Unfortunately I had the Out of memory (OOM) effect again and had to restart FS9 again until I could continue for the nice approach to the runway.
   

As we were on the approach to RWY 04R I saw this BAe 146 in front of me at about 3.3 NM out also on approach to RWY 04R approaching slower than we were and I also had a damned Speedbird in my neck which gave me a TCAS announcement. As RWY 04L became visible we switched to a visual approach to the parallel runway, more for the reason to not being ordered to go around as I expected the BAe 146 would 'block' the runway, but it was able to vacate the runway just in time and so the Speedbird could land without the need for a go around. Unfortunately taxi time to the Cargo Apron was somewhat longer, but shorter as a go around would have been.

Well on the other hand the weather at Helsinki was not really the best. I hope the weather at Krasnodar will be a little bit better, but I will find out in less than four hours.
   

See you later...