Visit of an old friend

I don`t know how many hours I spent on bord these beauties (during my time as a volunteer flight-manager at Ostend), but one ting is for sure: These Antonov AN-12s are real "man-airplanes"! Since the EU baned european airlines from flying those, such planes became a rare sight in western Europe.
This one is operated by russian enterprise "Kosmos" and came with some 16 tons of cargo from Athens to Hannover. Katrin and I decided to spend some time at the second of April at the airport, watching it arrive and beeing unloaded.

Eindhoven, Netherlands

On Sunday i took the chance and flew with the newest addition to our fleet from Hannover to Eindhoven and back. D-IDAX, a Cessna 425 "Conquest I" provided a smooth ride over a solid overcast along the way. Sometimes my job isn't that bad :-)

Being a Freight-Dog again

Sometimes I miss doing the dirty cargo-flights. It sounds strange, but since I am working for an airline, I rarly have any time to hop on a plane and acompany flights. This does not make it easier to reach my goal: having completed 1.000 flights by my 40th birthday. Last thursday though I sold a cargo flight to a customer, departing from our homebase Hannover exactly at the end of my work - so so need to think twice. I ordered our maintanance department to remove the passenger-seats from one of our Piper Cheyennes except for two and after a long time I joined our flight crew on their way from Dortmund to Liverpool - both airports being firsts for myself, at least to visit them by air. Everything went very smooth and we had minimum ground-time on both airports.
An interresting sight was an obviously crashed Cessna 411 at Dortmund which must have been at its last resting-place for many years. We departed Dortmund into the cloudless and star-clear night and only experienced some clouds and rain near our destination Liverpool.
What a great get-away.

Istanbul weekend-trip with a handicap

A few days after we booked our four day extended weekend trip in Febuary, I broke my right foot - and that three times! Katrin and I decided to fly there anyway. We departed from Hannover to Istanbuls new low-cost airport SAW / Sabhia Gökcen very early on saturtay morning 27FEB10 on one of Sun Express' B 737-800. If anyone ever asks me how I would describe so called ethno-traffic I would strongly recomend joining exactly this flight. About 70% of our fellow passengers where Turkish people of all ages bringing most their household with them.
What a busy city - our hotel was directly in the citycenter in walking-distance to all important sights such as the bazars, mosques and the Bosphorus. Despite my handicap we did walk to all the places to see - for miles and miles. Even though the weather was not so kind to us we did the full tourist programme anyway. Visiting the Turkish Air Force Museum, going on a boat-cruise and visiting all major attractions.
Over the next days, I will upload some pics to my flickr.com page - enjoy!

Torben Week!

After about two weeks after Torbens big move to Seattle, I also went ther for a week to spend time with him. We had so much fun! With Kenmore Air we flew in a Beaver to the San Juan Islands, which was Torbens first floatplane-trip. On one leg he even sat in the copilot-seat. We visited the Museum of Flight and Paul Allens superb Historic Flight Collection at Everett. We really did a lot of man-stuff and enjoyed every moment of everything. I really hope we can see each other as often as possible. On my flickr.com stite (click "mehr Fotos/more pictures" in the right corner of this page) there are more pics - enjoy!

Sad day!

As much as I like airplanes, today I hated them. My beloved son Torben moved from Hannover to Seattle with my ex-wife. Alltough I knew this day was comming since a few weeks, this hit me so hard, I can rarely find words.
During the last weeks I did spend so much time with my little guy trying to use his remaining time here in Germany as good as possible - I cannot describe the feelings I had when I kissed him good-bye at the gate and saw him walking through the finger into his plane with his little trolleycase. I was trying to act normal around him, trying to keep my sadness inside myself, because Torben likes flying and he was so excited.

Cuba Libre!

Our ride from Havanna to Holguin - a 30 year old Boeing 737-200 from mexican carrier Global Air, operated for Aerocaribbean.

Viva la revolucion! Such paintings are just everywhere - like in most socialist-countries.

Bull-Taxi: such vehicles are very common in Cuba, mostly due to the lack of money and fuel. On the streets you see a lot of horse and bull-coaches, many bicycles but few cars. This great pic was taken by Katrin.

A long dream came true over Kartin's and my birthday: We decided to fly to Cuba and do it our style. We did not fly to the huge tourist resorts in Varadero, on the northern tip of the island, but rather to Holguin, which is a province in the southern part and less crowded. What a great experience. In Cuba there are two political systems at the same time - Capitalism and Socialism: tourists who live in luxurious hotels and can buy anything they want with their own currency - CUC (Cuban Pesos Convertible) - and the natives who just get the basics from their own currency (CUP). Some products you just cannot buy with the local CUP currency. Very confusing.

We did several trips by plane, train, boat and bus all over the island and including a short one-day trip to Havanna. Words can hardly describe the great time we had. This is truely a paradise island. Please have a look at my flickr.com pics (Click the "more pictures" button on the top right of this page) and view my Cuba photoalbum.