Fly Me Friendly

We’ve been getting through some rather crappy weather for the past two months. Lots of wind and rain with the occasional good weather day sneaking in here and there.

I crewed the hot air balloons again last weekend and could see on the account sheet at the fuelling station that we’d only had about 10 flying days in the past month or more. Ouch!

It’s AFL grand final this weekend and about 100,000 people are expected to squeeze into the Melbourne Cricket Grounds for the game, despite the predicted crappy weather on the way. I’m supposed to be crewing both days this weekend but it’s not looking great.

To give you an example, check out this TAF for Melbourne Airport over the next 30 hours:

TAF AMD YMML 240409Z 2406/2512 29015G28KT 9999 LIGHT SHOWERS OF RAIN SCT035 SCT045
FM240900 35013KT 9999 LIGHT SHOWERS OF RAIN SCT030 SCT040
FM241200 36020G32KT 9999 SCT040
FM241800 36028G42KT 9999 LIGHT SHOWERS OF RAIN SCT030 BKN040 OVC080
FM250000 34020G34KT 9999 LIGHT SHOWERS OF RAIN SCT020 BKN035
FM250600 29015G25KT 9999 LIGHT SHOWERS OF RAIN SCT025 SCT040
INTER 2406/2412 4000 SHOWERS OF RAIN BKN020
INTER 2500/2510 2000 SHOWERS OF RAIN AND SMALL HAIL PELLETS BKN015
RMK FM240600 MOD TURB BLW 5000FT
FM241200 MOD/SEV TURB BLW 5000FT TILL 250800
T 17 14 12 11 Q 1009 1009 1009 1007


This would have to be the longest TAF I’ve ever seen. Plus the weather is continued crappy with increased patches of crappy likely.

Not great for ballooning :(

I received an email from a friend of mine this afternoon after a rather wild attempted landing at Hong Kong (VHHH). Gotta love that inflight Internet access, no?

I am currently typing this at 29000 feet, 804km/h, sitting in row57h on an A330. We took off from Taipei .. got to Hong Kong and was put in two holding patterns with 4 circuits each then we start the approach in to the airport …. Mate I have never been thrown around like we were !!

The plane was like out of control …sliding and buffering and then lurching ….crazy !!!!

The wheels went down … I held my breath …. We were all over the place … I couldn’t see anything as the fog was so low.

Then out of nowhere in the middle of a lurch to the left a wheel hit the ground and then we had full power come on and we went hard up and took off straight away !!

So now were are on our way to Taipei again to refuel and then come back ….. but now the captain has told us we don’t have the fuel to get there so we are going to a smaller airport closer called Kaohsiung. We are to refuel there and then head back to Hong Kong

That’s certainly worse than my scariest landing which was going into Boston (KBOS) on a dark & stormy evening, rocking & rolling all over the place. Looking out the window at gray water then gray sky, engines spooling up and down – woo hoo – quite the ride. At least on my flight we made it down and didn’t need a go-around (all be it we touched down with a very positive return to earth).