A Monarch plane (B757 I think) overtaking us, 2000ft below while flying past Athens. The zoom on the camera isn't so good, but the plane was much closer than it appears...

Hopefully this was Athens (again) but from the other side at 36,000ft on the way back home. I've tweaked the colour to try and show more details, so it now looks like a ghastly postcard!

Tony having a quiet moment in the cruise, again on the way to HER.

Andrea and Jane (on the right), two of the delightful crew on my trip to Heraklion (HER) in Crete. They happily posed for this photo on the turnaround down route!

And here is Athens while passing down the spine of Greece on the way to HER. The old airport is in the bottom right hand corner. It was apparently quite a tricky approach through a valley to get in there. The airport is off to the left and looked huge - a handy diversion airfield I think!

New Security Measures

Things were very different when I reported for work today. Reading on the company intranet it was clear that certain things weren't allowed, so the calculator, PDA, sharp pencils, any liquids etc.. were all removed prior to turning up! However, even that wasn't enough - we weren't allowed to even take our flight bags with us. Everything that was allowed had to be in a nice see-through plastic bag. It makes you wonder what I need all the stuff for!

Through security with large queues for the passengers, but everyone seemed fairly relaxed... a full check of my ID, shoes removed and a body search later we were deemed safe to go to the plane. From there on, there were no more dramas, on the inbound flight the passengers were allowed to bring back all the usual items with them in the cabin - much to the amusement of the cabin crew who were severely restricted in what they could have (no deodorant, hairspray, perfume etc...).

Anyway, hopefully it will all calm down soon enough....

During the flight down to Tenerife, I was reading through some of the documentation given to us concerning MyTravel's attempt to improve it's punctuality. On Time Performance (OTP) is the lifeblood of a charter airline as it is a commonly used metric to distinguish between the competitors.

A few years ago, MyTravel apparently had terrible OTP, however, a special working group was set-up to attach greater focus on this part of the airline operation. The result of this was that MyTravel were awarded the Most Improved Charter Airline for the summer 06 season.

Full stats for MyTravel can be found at the following URL: http://flightontime.info/charter/airlines/myt.html
(All the data is collected and published by the CAA).

Given the focus on OTP, this clearly has a knock-on effect on how the flight deck schedules and performs tasks to ensure that we meet and often exceed the required timings to ensure good OTP. However, the overriding concern is always safety, and nothing is unduly rushed to meet the deadlines!

No Captain....

Well, I was all ready at the report time in the crew room.... and no Captain! No naming names, but apparently he had the wrong time for report written down.

That meant it was all up to me to get all the pre-flight checks and briefing done. I hurried down to the aircraft to ensure refueling has started and then performed the usual PF checks and actions prior to the flight. I then did the PNF duties, a quick walkaround the aircraft to look for any damage or visibly obvious areas of concern. Having done all this, with all the passengers boarded, the Captain arrived at the aircraft with 15mins to spare before take-off time. After a quick (but safe!) brief to him, we were in position to request clearance for Tenerife and get underway. Although I was a bit worried at first, I managed to get on with all the actions, and eventually quite enjoyed the extra stress / responsibility that came with it. Not quite Captain material yet, give it another 4000 hours, and who knows!

So this is what is in front of me during the long cruise down to FUE. The top piece of paper is the master copy of the Plog. On here is pretty much all the information we need to plan and monitor the flight. It contains among other things, details on the route (waypoints, FIR boundaries, tracks and distances), the flight plan submitted, routes to diversion airfields, winds on route at lots of altitudes, estimated weights for Take-Off and Landing, and a fuel prediction. We use the Plog to set the flight up when we first arrive at the aircraft and then the PNF (Pilot Non Flying) uses it to monitor and record the progress of the flight as we fly. Generally this means checking track and distances tie-up when traversing a waypoint, monitoring timings against that forecast and ensuring the fuel usage is accurate and balanced across the fuel tanks (this allows us to ensure no fuel leak is occurring).

Underneath the plog is the relevant airways chart (made by Jeppesen for MyTravel) for the route we are flying. The two screens are the PFD (Primary Flying Display) which contains most of the information required to monitor the actual flying attributes of the aircraft, while the ND (Navigation Display) show the route, winds, other aircraft (using TCAS), and weather (using a radar). If used correctly (!), it can also provide useful prompts to help us plan our descent points to minimise fuel usage.

This is one of the NCL based cabin crew, during a quick check to see if we are still alive in the cockpit. It's SOPs for communication to occur about every 30 mins to ensure that things are okay in the flight deck. Fortunately this generally coincides with either a refreshment break or a toilet stop! Claire got all shy as soon as the camera came out!

A quick snap of one of the NCL based training captains, Oliver during the cruise. The photo was taken on the long flight down to Fuerteventura (FUE) in the Canaries (just over 4 hours each way!). Given it's location, it's usual to track to FUE via Spain and Portugal (directly overhead Faro), whereas all the other Canary Islands are usually reached by flying down Tango Routes. More of them to come when I can come up with a suitable description!