Keith or "Stormy" as he's apparently known! I think Keith was the final Captain I had to fly with in Newcastle. Now I have the full set of cards!

Racing down to FUE with a fellow MyTravel A320 2000ft below overtaking us over the Atlantic Ocean.

Off on Holiday!

10 days off on holiday! Here's a snap out of our hotel window in Chamonix of the Glacier that hangs over the town.

Somewhere in the darkness of the cockpit, is Mark, one of the younger Captains in Newcastle. I've only flown with him once, and I have no more flights rostered with him - not sure if it's something I said!

Onboard food

The crew onboard are quite well fed - well I think so! If the flight is early in the morning we get a cooked breakfast (much like the BA breakfast for passengers), plus a box of cereal and milk. Otherwise there's a choice of cooked meals such as: Indonesian Pork, Sweet and Sour Chicken, Chicken Tikka, Veg Curry, Chicken and Roast Potato, Sausage and Mash.... We also get a choice from a selection of sandwiches, crisps and chocolate bars. On top of this... if the flight is long (about 4 hours) we also get a small snack - usually a jacket potato with some kind of sauce. This photo shows the famous spicy lamb on jacket potato. The box above, is full of condiments and includes a pudding (usually Sponge Pudding or Chocolate Pudding).

While outside with my camera, I took a quick picture of the front cargo hold. Basically it's just a big space where the bags are loaded and secured for the flight. Next to it, you can see the conveyor belt for loading and unloading bags...

Getting all nerdy, here's the refuelling panel tucked away on the right-hand side of the aircraft just under the wing. It allows us to control the refueling and defueling (although that's quite rare), and then automatically controls the distribution of fuel between the fuel tanks (2 in each wing - inner and outer, and the centre tank). Here there's 14,100kg of fuel requested, and currently 2,500kg onboard - with it reasonably balanced 1,200 vs 1,300kg.

Nicola, another of the cabin crew, hoping that the wind doesn't change...

Contrails in the sky...

Another contrail, I was obviously feeling artistic when I took these photos!

An aeroplane passing us by 2000ft above with a nice contrail...

MyTravel along with some of the other UK charter airlines, keep Engineers based at some of the popular destinations to service aircraft should anything need attention. MyTravel has it's own Engineer at Corfu who also covers a few of the other Greek islands during a stint down in Greece. I've forgotten his name, but he seems to have a nice life flying between the islands to meet MyTravel flights a few times a week!

While waiting for our missing passenger I took my camera out and took the following video of a nice approach and landing from a Boeing 737....

BMI Airbus on very short finals. I find it quite hard to judge the height, but it should be between 100ft and 50ft flying towards the displaced threshold with the aim of passing over that at 50ft. The threshold is displaced due to the town and a road being a few metres N of the end of the runway surface.

However, he didn't get fully stabilised for the landing and so performed a go-around. Basically the SOPs at MyTravel require that the aircraft is fully configured (gear down & full flaps) with the engine thrust stable (not idle) by 500ft above the airfield in visual conditions and 1000ft in instrument conditions (i.e. in cloud). Obviously the flying Pilot didn't feel that the approach was stable and took the correct action to go-around. The flew a nice visual circuit to a good landing again on the same runway!

This is the Gatwick MyTravel arrival on final approach onto runway 17. We remarked that he looked a little high, but not too much...

Day out to Corfu (CFU)

Today I flew down to Corfu in Greece with Alex (one of the Training Captains in NCL). Given it was the 5th Anniversary of 9/11, I hoped the day would go well. Corfu is well known to be an interesting airport to operate into given step ground all around, the town being at one end of the runway and the lack of an ILS for instrument approaches.

As it was Alex made a nice visual approach to the Northern runway and once on stand we had a lovely view of landing aircraft coming in on runway 17 (the wind shifted direction slightly).

Unfortunately we had a bit of delay as a deaf passenger didn't come to the boarding gate and had to be tracked down in the terminal before we could close up the aircraft and return home. Hence, I managed to get some pictures of landings, a MyTravel go-around and a video of a B737 landing. I hope you enjoy them!

This is Alan, the Manager for the Cabin Crew in Newcastle. He came on our flight to perform a line check on one of the crew (jsimilar to how the flight crew receive line checks every 6 months). He looks very serious filling in the post flight paperwork!

Back in the Newcastle crew room, the cabin crew are performing their post flight duties. They get 1 hr after the plane stops on stand to perform these duties (The flight crew only get 30 minutes - but we have far less to do!). The main task for the cabin crew is to count and bank all the money taken on the flight. Selling duty-free and drinks etc.. are an important way to make extra money for both the working cabin crew (as commission) and the company overall, so they are taught selling techniques and there are lots of promotions and prices to incentivise the crew further!

Sad as I am, I was doing some reading up on the equipment on board the A320. I found a lovely picture of the Auxilary Power Unit (APU) which sits at the back of the aircraft and provides both power and air on the ground. This means we are fairly self-sufficient when arriving at a distant airport, not requiring either external AC power or an air start unit. More details are available at wikipedia.