Friday, March 13, 2015

Glasgow to Keflavik (EGPF - BIKF)

The Land of Ice, Fire . . . and electrical storms.

A"long haul" across the frozen straight to Iceland. This week has seen a steady set of rolling storms howl across this stretch of icy sea. High winds battering any aircraft making the crossing. On both attempts, wind sheer and electrical thunderstorms over Keflavik, threw up a few spanners, into the works. A "flame out" of number one engine on approach made things a bit more exciting. Only this time, I was able to get the engine restarted, . . . unlike the day before. Unfortunately there is no step by step procedure guide for what to do, that I could find? Things did not end that great, and I believe Keflavik airport must have been shut for the day after as they removed the wreckage.  Originally I had set the incidents for an emergency to occur during my "AtW" to 1%.What's the odd that I would have a similar procedural emergency on the second attempt of EPGF to BIKF?
Note: In total I ran this route four times before making it in one piece.




Airport Scenery
(BIKF) Keflavik International Airport. A bit of a bleak landscape with little surrounding vegetation. It would appear that the airport is on a peninsular with Reykjavik a few miles to the north. I think FSX Iceland is lacking some imaginary scenary building. This airport was from Aerosoft and part of their "AtW" discount download and integrates nicely with AES.   



AI Traffic
BIKF is home to Icelandair. On the WoAI schedule (summer 2014) that I downloaded, there was a 13H05 departure from Glasgow to Keflavik. But if you go on to the airlines website I could only find flights departing from Gatwick. They must suspend EGPF flights in the winter??
WoAI Icelandair from AVsim




Charts 
I got the BIKF AIP charts off the Aerosoft download. Not much to go on about. STAR and SID are basic.




THE FLIGHT PLAN
TimeNotes


The Planning: I kept the departure time to 13H25 with a scheduled arrival for 15H30. The flight was suppose to take just over two hours, but I ended up 54 minutes late due to weather and inflight emergencies.










The Route: EGPF/ LOMON/ STN/ RATSU/ BREKI/ BIKF

Departed EGPF:  Rwy 23 SID LOMAN 3A

Arrivals BIKF:  STAR via BREKI
Rwy 20 ILS







The Weather: Thor, the god of thunder, waiting to greet all new arrivals. Dodging storm cells at FL35 was still a very bumpy affair. Vomit bags are freely available in the front of your seat. The seat belt light will remain on for this flight!


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