The end of my adventure with MyTravel

Well that's it then for my experiences with MyTravel out of the Newcastle base. I had an amazing 6 months working with some really fun and interesting people. It was obviously hard (nothing hasn't been during all of my flight training), but hugely rewarding. Hopefully the experience and knowledge I've gained over my time with MyTravel will help me find a good job in due course. I finished with just over 400 hours, and 112 sectors (so 56 return flights), this included 79 take-offs and 83 landings (All flights had a take-off and landing! However, during line training I was offered a few extra take-off & landings by the Captain!). The longest flight was 5:12h blocks-off to blocks-on (i.e. including all ground time moving under our own power), with the shortest being 45 minutes (Manchester to Newcastle ferry flight with a time in the air of 29 minutes!).

It wasn't much fun handing my uniform and pass back in, however, I'm sure it won't be long again before I'm bounding about another airport somewhere else.

Only one more adventure left... the MyTravel end of season Party. Due to be held down in the deepest darkest depths of Newcastle City Centre. No photos will be taken to protect the innocent!

 
And here's one such B757 overtaking us a bit higher up on the return back to the UK!

 
And this was what was above all that cloud, a lovely evening sunset. Taken at about FL80 on our climb out towards the Italian mainland. One of the nice things is getting away from the nasty weather down on the ground. However, the highest I've managed in the Airbus is FL390 (around 39,000ft). The engines haven't got enough grunt to get any higher. The Boeings usually manage a couple of thousand feet higher at FL410 if needed to avoid weather or gain advantage from better winds.

 
We decided to delay our departure due to thunderstorms all around the airfield with lots of lighning, rain and gusty winds. This Monarch A300 called up for departure and left during our wait, he seemed to have no problems leaving...

 
A few of the cabin crew during the turnaround in HER, happily reading trashy magazines. One of the joys during the summer has been getting all the magazines and papers on the turnaround for a sneaky read on the way home. Along with the usual lad mags, I've also managed to learn a thing or two from OK, Hello and the like!

Final Flight with MyTravel

 
Well today is my final flight with MyTravel - down to Heraklion. That was also my very first flight back in late May.

The weather was horrible leaving Newcastle - with the crosswind being just outside my limits. However, more surprising was that the wind, cloud etc... were forecast to be horrible down in HER, unlike my first trip of the season.

Here is the Captain for the flight - Steve, with his flying mascot: Spot the Dog (He's not mad really!)

Here's my view from the Right Hand Seat (RHS) showing some of the complicated instruments and displays available to me on the flight deck. They should probably have 'look but don't touch' stickers on them. Fortunately the Airbus philosophy involves colours, noises and flashing lights to bring any issues to the pilot's attention - handy that! The ECAM window is the lower of the two black panels in the centre (click on ECAM for more info!)

 
Lac d'Annecy, again where we stayed on holiday, on the way back home from Corfu over the French Alps.

 
Here's the highest mountain in Europe, Mont Blanc, with its' surrounding glaciers and other high mountains. According to Wikipedia, Mont Blanc is 15,774ft high, so just under half the height we were flying at. Only a couple of weeks before we'd been hiking around that area on holiday!

 
Back to the grainy photos from 36,000ft! Here's a snap of the French Rivera around the Monaco area. You can clearly see the harbour in Monte-Carlo along with the lower range of mountains that become the Alps later on, which leads me to my next picture....

My PFD and ND somewhere near Brindisi in Southern Italy on the way home. We are climbing through FL310 on our way to FL360 (36,000ft) with a rate of climb of 1600 feet per minute (fpm). On the Navigation Display (ND), you can see that we are tracking about 300 degrees (WNW) with quite a strong headwind. This can be seen by the difference between our True Air Speed (TAS) and Ground Speed (GS) being about 80kts.

and here's the Thomas Cook Airbus taking off....

 
A nice snap of a Thomas Cook Airbus taxiing past us, on it's way to take off towards the South at Corfu.

Sunny Corfu...

 
Oli, my slightly scary Training Captain, in relaxed mode during the turnaround in Corfu. It really is nice to leave a rainy, windy UK and get 20mins standing around in the sun downroute. Oli had just done a lovely visual approach with manual thrust, so I think he was feeling happy that day!

 
This is Kim, the only female Captain I managed to fly with during my time with MyTravel. As you can see Kim is relaxing on the long return flight from the Canaries reading the Sunday papers'. Unlike the male pilots, Kim vetted each attempt at a picture and approved the above for publication! Hopefully she's happy with it.

A nice view of an Alpine lake and valleys somewhere on the border between Germany and Italy on the way to ZTH.

Cardiff seen while heading North to the VOR at Breacon before turning right towards Manchester and home to Newcastle.