Namastee India!

With just two weeks booking in advance, Katrin and I decided on a rather exotic destination for our short winter vaccation: GOA, India. With a passion for indian food, indepth sight-seeing and general curiosity we could not have made a better choice for our holiday. So many impressions: we had the grestest food in greasy indian restaurants, saw the most amazing animals in nature such as wild monkeys, pics, cows, snakes, crabs, buffalos. During our 10 day stay we did not see a single cloud in the sky.
The bigger part of our GOA-experience could be named "India by foot"! We walked for miles and miles everyday and only occational took a Tuc-Tuc or a taxi. We experienced very nice and helpful people during our adventure. I will be starting uploading some pics on my flickr.com site soon.
Although this was not an "aviation adventure", I could not have survived this time without at least a few airplanes - the Naval Aviation Museum on the southside of the airport was the place to go. The pic shows the last surviving Lockheed Super-Constellation in India ....with truck tires.

The other picture shows one of the restaurants we had lunch at - nice and clean... but the most delicious food you can imagine.

Cruising

What a nice ride! On friday I spontaneuously decided to go for a ride from Hannover to Leipzig. It was a lovley winterafternoon with low sun. I got to spend the entire 35min on the copilots seat. The Piper Cheyenne is one of my most flown Turboprops and also this routing I flew already many times and I must say it never gets boring. My journey back to Hannover by car took a lot longer due to the first snow this year in Germany.

The bottom pic shows my homebase. This is where I grew up, this is where I work and almost live.... Hannover airport.

Libya!

I have been to Tripoli about 6 years ago with an Antonov 12 just stopping for fuel from N'Djamena to Ostend, Belgium. That time I thought this would for sure be my first and last time to Libya.

I was wrong: Last weekend I flew from Hannover, Germany to TIP. What a dirty, yet interessting country. Our ride was a Fokker F-100. We had a marvellous flight over the Alps - which is to my eyes one of the most rewarding scenes you can see from an airplane.

Tripoli is tha capital of Libya, and it has 2 airports. One is Mitiga, which is located almost within citylimits and is used for military flights, the other one is Tripoli International, about 20km to the south of the city. For an aircraft enthusiast like me both airports are interesting:  At Mitiga several Iljushins are parked on the ramp, Tripoli International has huge storage areas which contain anything Boeing built 20 to 40 years ago and several smaller aircraft. 

But it was not all aviation and hard and nerve-wrecking work: We also did some sight seeing and the most amazing thing was our visit to Leptis Magna - and old roman/greek city to the east of Tripoli.

In addition to these pics, you will find more (as usual) on my flickr.com site - please check the link in the right corner of this page - enjoy! 

Munich, Bavaria

Do you see the Alps? I don't either. Anyway, this was a nice one: Blue Line, a french charter operator invited us for a 40min flight from Munich over the alps (which obviously were covered by clouds) to Promote their MD-83 in executive layout. Usually these planes are equipped with 167 Seats, but this one only carries 60 passengers in business-class seats with lots of legroom and excellent catering. If you got enough bucks this might bring you to your next vacation.

Nassau Bahamas

One of the aviation highlights of my short visit to the Bahamas. This DC-3 is 65 years old and still going strong, hauling cargo to and from the US and the Bahamas. Looking a bit beaten up and faded while basking in the hot bahamian sun, I got to see her take of the next day on one of the more or less scheduled trips to Florida. As usual on my flickr site (www.flickr.com/photos/flyingaxel) will be some more pics.   

Nassau, Bahamas

Finally, with a day of delay due to hurricane Fay, which got me stuck in Miami for a day I arrived in Nassau, Bahamas.

During my three days here I did not see much except the airport (including half an hour of spotting though) and the hotel - and the road in between.

I was here a a flight manager and consultant for several charterflights from and to Europe.

This ATR-72 was my ride for the 0:50h flight from Miami to Nassau. 

I just uploaded some more pics from my Ontario and Manitoba Experience two month ago on my flickr.com site. Please click "More Pictures / Mehr Fotos" on the right side of this page.

Also, yesterday I learned that the right Beaver on this Pic C-FNOT crashed only a few days ago, fortunately without fatalities but substantially damaging the plane ending up upside down in a forest.

I was actually trying to fly in one of these on the beautyful day when I took this picture at Red Lake, Ontario.