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LIRQ - LGAV
Today it's my turn to fly left
seat for the leg from Florence, Italy, to Athens, Greece.
The weather and flight plan fax gets delivered to our door
at the Savoy Hotel and, except for the possibility of some
isolated thunderstorms enroute, the weather reports look good
at both ends of the leg and there are some good strong tailwinds
to expect.
We dress and pack then head downstairs
to have breakfast in the Savoy's restaurant. The last couple
of days we have had a continental breakfast delivered to the
room but yesterday, when starting our walk, Pam saw someone
enjoying some really great-looking fried eggs in the restaurant…the
ones where you almost had to don sunglasses because the yolks
were so orange bright! And also, with our flying schedule
today, it looks like breakfast may be our only meal before
dinner, so we wanted to stoke the belly fires pretty well.
As we've come to expect at this hotel, the service was impeccable
and the food excellent. "Some eggs in addition to the breakfast
buffet, Signora? No problem!"
We sit next to a nice woman from
Toronto, Canada, who was starting her first day of a five-day
Florentine visit. She had arrived by train from the Amalfi
coast last night. Both her grandmother and her mother had
visited Italy long before and had written - and kept! - journals
of their experiences, journals which this lady (about our
age) still had! It was amazing, she said, how many descriptions
were still accurate in detail to what she was now seeing.
When the breakfast check is presented,
I could see why the waiter was so accommodating to Pam's eggs
request: They only cost an extra eleven bucks! Ah, the price
of going first class. What's the old line? "Sure I can go
first class. Just not for as long!"
A taxi is summoned and we leave
for the Florence airport, named Peratola, about 10:00 a.m.,
for a scheduled 1:00 p.m. takeoff. There is a slight delay
finding the formula for getting through the security checkpoint
and out to the plane, but the handlers finally meet us and
all goes well. The fuel truck arrives, we top up the main
tanks, preflight, and then I get driven the ¼ mile back to
the terminal building to wait for Pat and Ashley's arrival
to show them the route through security.
Their bags are too big for the
carry-on x-ray scanner and in the confusion of our handlers
taking the bags to another scanner, Pat and I end up at the
shuttle van without Ashley, thinking she went with the handlers
and the bags. But no! When the two handler ladies return with
the bags, there is no Ash! The "I thought she was with you!"
comments were followed by a search inside and, good Girl Scout
that she is, there she was, staying put in the last place
we had been together, knowing someone would recheck there
eventually. Good going, Ashley!
Unfortunately, but quite usual
over here, Air Traffic Control (ATC) assigns a departure time
that is 42 minutes later than our filed time. Even though
P & A had a bad experience checking out of their hotel in
Chianti, taking 45 minutes for what should have been a 5 minute
operation due to clerk and credit card snags, and were worried
that they would be late, they actually arrived in good time
for the scheduled departure and now we all sit around and
chat about our respective Italian experiences while we kill
the extra 42 minutes.
Finally, the door is closed,
we call for startup and clearance, and off we go, taxiing
out at 13:35 a.m. local, or 1135Z. We are wheels up five minutes
later.
The filed routing that Universal
had submitted was the routing we received. Again, I am so
impressed with the Garmin 530s! Departure procedure? There
it is, "in the box." Then Pam enters the rest of the enroute
waypoints and we sit back and monitor the autopilot as it
tracks the course perfectly. Once again, FL270 is where we
level off - this is getting to be a habit - and we confirm
that we have a great push from the winds, sometimes as much
as 55 knots of help. The sky is mostly clear. The route takes
us southeast, just about perfectly following the northeast
coast of the Italian "boot." I shoot a picture of one of the
530's screens that shows the route and the Italian boot shape
of land: Look for it on the website. Across the sea to our
left we can make out the coast of Albania and we pass the
island of Corfu.
Even though English is used for
all official aviation communication, if a pilot calls the
controller in the native language, usually the response will
come back that same way. So, we hear some Spanish in Spain,
French in France, etc. Even using English, however, a little
quirk has developed that is almost in universal use now, and
it is nice. Namely, almost all pilots make their initial and
their last contacts with a particular controller using the
controller's language. So, it is "Buon Journo" (I don't think
I'm spelling that right) and "Ciao" to Milano, "Bon Jour"
and "Au Revoir" to Marseille. Also, perhaps as a courtesy
to many English and the American pilots they work with, we
notice that lots of times the various controllers will sign
off with a "Bye Bye" no matter what country they're in. (Wonder
how you say this stuff in Arabic?)
The Athens airport is brand new,
having opened in March of this year, replacing a smaller one
closer to downtown. We were surprised that the availability
of ground control radar for approach vectoring purposes was
not indicated on the approach charts, but thought that perhaps
the radar facilities had been delayed in opening at the new
airport. Thus, as Pam and I briefed for the likely approach
procedure, we did so based on the likelihood that we would
do all of our own navigating. Surprise! As soon as we contacted
Athens Approach it was the normal "Fly heading of 080 degrees,
descend to FL110, radar vectors for the ILS Runway 21R approach."
Athens is supposedly the third
smoggiest city in the world, after Mexico City and Los Angeles.
Sure enough, it was darn hazy/smoggy as we descended and our
landing direction was right into the late afternoon sun, so
it was difficult to see very much. What we did see, however,
was a huge city (four million plus people) on the sea and
with many medium-height hills around.
I managed to get it stopped on
the little 13,000 foot-long runway (chuckle) and we were soon
following the marshaller's van to our assigned parking stand.
Our block-to-block time was 2.9 hours. Weather was clear and
temperature in the low 80s.
P & A and their luggage went
with the handlers in the van immediately while Pam and I did
the postflight chores and monitored the refilling of the main
tanks. Remember that in Europe General Aviation is a much
smaller segment of flying than in the USA so hence the facilities
are geared much more to the airlines than to us smaller operators.
One example: The fuel trucks are huge! I haven't seen one
used on us yet that couldn't equally be used to fill a few
747s! Now that's a TRUCK!
We lost another hour today which
makes it 5:26 p.m. local in Athens when we shutdown. We are
on our way to town about an hour after landing, riding in
a Mercedes taxi provided by the handlers. This new airport
is quite far from town and the traffic we encounter is horrendous.
Glad we used "the facilities" before we loaded up! And the
routing?! Geez, I hope the driver knows where he's going,
because it is a sure bet that neither Pam nor I do! And there'd
better not be a quiz on how to get back to the airport! All
of the directional signs are printed showing first the Greek
word, in the Greecian alphabet, and then the English equivalent:
Athene/Athens, for example. However, when you see those Deltas
and Pis and Omegas and Gammas, you really appreciate the English
being there too.
At long last, up a narrow street,
we arrive at the Hotel Andromeda, where we are sharing an
apartment this time with P & A. The apartment is nice, roomy
and clean, with a kitchen, two bedrooms, and two baths, although
one is tiny. In neither of the baths are there shower curtains!
When one showers, the whole place gets wet! Oh well; good
they have it all tiled!
We throw on some nicer clothes
and stroll back across the street from the apartment to the
main hotel for dinner in their small restaurant. All of the
staff speaks fine English and we are impressed with the friendliness
and fun that they exude. Plus, according to Ashley and Pam,
the young guys are sooooo cute! (The young Greek ladies aren't
bad either!) The food is absolutely delicious, but then, you
KNOW we are gonna say that; haven't had a really lousy meal
yet!
Group at Parthenon
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Italy Boot
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Peratola Airport, Florence |
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