Going flying for a weekend is always fun – planning to do so with a group of instructors and students just adds to the usual excitement. You are not travelling in a group of friends used to each other but combine discovering new locations with also getting to know new travelling buddies….and certainly you are hoping for lot of stories and pilot experiences to be exchanged during the time together.
With these expectations a group of 3 instructors, 6 students and 4 pilots met at the Rotterdam flight club early on a grey Friday morning – our geographical aim a small village at the coast from Normandy.
Each crew set off to start their navigation planning, something my crew consisting of 4 licensed pilots had already roughly done via group chats before. Thus after a short detailling we were the first to take off towards the South.
Less than 1 1/2 hours later we land in Kortrijk/Belgium. By now the sky is blue and spirits are high. We started to work well as team and the weather looks much more promising than when we took off. Weekend here we come! Happily we head off to Lille for a French lunch.
Planning…..
We are impressed with the well organized transport service which is bringing us from our plane parking position to the terminal building and the fact that our chauffeur lady speaks a rather good English. For once communication does not seem to be a problem. However, our dreams of French lunch are soon shattered as we are escorted to the general terminal buildings and we really do not fancy a quick restaurant lunch together with hundreds of French holiday makers, so a simple sandwich has to do while we do the further route planning. Unfortunately the weather seems to get nasty at the coast, but our next planned stop Abbeville is only around 50 nm away and still inlands. If we go soon, we should make it without any troubles. We refuel quickly and take off again, but the weather is faster than we thought and soon we decide that Abbeville is no option, but to go around and turning westwards later directly towards our end destination Dieppe.
…and reality….
Diversion due to weather – we all practise this during our training, but how often does it really happen? And where are the limits we set to ourselves? Anyway, the clouds we see are so black that decision making is easy and with Sky Demon in triplicate on board our new courses are set in no time. So Dieppe it is….we think….for about 5 more minutes. Then it becomes clear that going directly will also not be an option. Another quick look at the map shows Amiens airport nearby – and somehow we are not surprised to meet the crew of one of our other group planes who is trying to sit out the weather at the same place. So together we are heading into the nearby shopping centre for something to eat and to wait for weather improvements.
While PH-SVU crew is taking off again, we decide to take it easy and stay in Amiens for the night. The black cloud now seems directly above us and a detour to avoid it might take too much time in respect for sunset. And anyhow, we met old colleagues here so we prefer to be stuck with some French speaking help nearby as well.
Waving goodbye to PH-SVU we see another light approaching and start to collect our (limited) luggage somehow expecting our fellow travellers to be back within no time as the weather is really closing in now.
At least some of us are dry
Funny how focussed you are on the flying conditions in such situations! We all look at each other in amazement when the black cloud we have been discussing for the last 2 hours suddenly unloads itself in a rush of heavy rain. We did not at all think about this “side effect of potentially bad flying weather” and look around confused: the airport building is closed and there is nothing to hide….unless we open one of the parasols from the vacated restaurant. And still no sign of our colleagues who just took off – so we tune into the airport frequency via our handheld radio to see how they are doing. “crkgs…crkgs…crks…”, is all we here and then suddenly: “PH-NSC is approaching Amiens for landing!” This is plane number 3 of our group now. But where is PH-SVU and what happened to PH-SPZ to whom we said good-bye in Rotterdam this morning? Surely they must be stuck nearby as well? At least we are able to give the approaching colleagues some directions about parking and where to find us and shortly thereafter we find ourselves cosily huddled up with 7 under our parasol. In the meantime the old friend has already organized nearby hotel rooms and a taxi which is on the way to pick us up. Definitely none of us would have been able to explain in French that 7 drowning people are hiding behind a closed airport building and that the car needs not only to beep the horn, but also wait for us to run towards the front. So thanks Michael for your super support!!!!
When arriving in the hotel, we also finally hear from PH-SVU. They have been taken by the weather as well and landed safely in Albert, only 10 minutes flying time away. What a shame – being stuck all together would be so much more fun. So they decide to take a taxi and come back to us. A quickly ordered beer lifts the spirits immediately and when we then also get the message that the car with most of the luggage is nearby and will stop at the hotel to drop of all bags, the happy mood returned. Dry clothes, cold drinks, something warm to eat and good company to laugh of the day’s turns are definitely the best cure! Only my luggage was still far away and had already arrived in another car at the coast. So it was an easy decision to jump in with the other driver, reaching St Valery late in the night.
Saturday….surely it will be sunny today as forecasted and I will not only see my fellow crew members again, but also have the chance of getting my PH-XYZ check out to be able to fly myself a bit.
The “drivers troop” I meet at breakfast is curious to hear about our adventures from the day before. And than there is the PH-SPZ crew as well who really made it through the rain yesterday flying the coastal line rather than inlands as we all did. Together we all head of to check on the local field conditions in St Valery, but have to conclude quickly that the rain made the runway definitely unusable for any landing. So we send a quick message to Amiens that we will all meet in Dieppe in about 1 hour. You cannot imagine our surprise when we hear that “Amiens is not flyable – we go for coffee now and wait it out!” To cut a very long story and many, many app messages short: coffee drinking continued for the rest of the day, in Amiens, then in Albert for re-fueling both the planes and the coffee batteries, then Amiens again and certainly in Dieppe where we were waiting, waiting and well…..waiting…….
By 5 o’clock it is finally clear: nobody will get any flying done today, so we might as well just stop waiting and swap from coffee drinking to a glass of warming French red wine, get dry clothes and head for some nice sea food dinner.
St Valery coast – probably stunning with blue skies and sunshine
But somehow in the back of our head there sits a nagging questions: what will happen tomorrow?
Good bye Amiens
Again we wake up to rain, rain and some more rain. My crew is informed already: do not worry about me, but see that you get home safely. Unfortunately my driver then also fails, so organisational phone terror begins again. Finally around lunch I have made my way back to Amiens (Thanks Otto for the extra ride!!!) where I meet three crews ready to go and I jump in. As we fly with 3 pilots, we quickly stop for a pilot change in Abbeville – the place we already wanted to have checked out 48 hours earlier and could not reach then.
54 hours after taking off in Rotterdam all 4 crews meet again in Calais
In Calais we then finally meet all other 3 crews: our 4 planes are beautifully lined up on the parking while we celebrate a short reunion and make the planning for the last leg. Passing Duinkerk and the French-Belgium border finally the sky opens up and we enjoy a lovely 50 minutes flight back along the Dutch coast back to Rotterdam. Thanks to the flightclub bar and their handheld radio, drinks and dinner are already waiting when we land.
“How was your flying weekend?” Well, this is a difficult question to answer. The legs we did fly have been great! The chats we had and the learning you can take when listening to more experienced guys always add value. Certainly more practical flying would have been fun and certainly it was a shame that our group was split up at two locations. But somehow this also gave us the chance to have very intensive talks with the guys we have been stuck with respectively, bonded by the joined misfortune kaing the best of it. Certainly these days are the basis for new flyer friendships and lots of ideas for future trips together.
My very personal learning points: never let go of your luggage! Simply pack lighter than light when the weight and balance gets to its boundairies. Having all you need with you can safe you quite some time in the car to go hunting for it- time which you definitely would prefer to spend in the air or with your travelling companions instead!
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