For Our Pilot Readers - the Leg From Reykjavik to Vienna, Austria

For our pilot followers, our leg from Reykjavik, Iceland to Vienna, Austria is the longest leg of the Journey, a total of 1600 NM, forcing us to break it down to 850 NM and 750 NM with a technical stop.

The Great Circle route takes us over Norway to Vienna with a stop in Stavanger as the best solution.

Here is the brief:

Tail winds were forecast on the first leg and we got them!

Easy departure out of BIRK, passage through a thin cloud layer into blue skies shortly after. We were stopped at 5,000 feet for 3 minutes because of incoming traffic but the rest of the journey went well. We had an ISA -2 on departure all the way to 30,000 feet and then all the way to our cruising altitude. The ISA kept climbing all the way to +14, that gave us a slower TAS but we managed to land with 950 lbs of fuel.

The NOTAM called for work with the possibilities of closure on the ground in Stavanger, but the most interesting one was the warning about a flare stack erected 2.5 NW of the threshold of Runway 18, the one we were using. We had to make sure we were above 700 feet because of the gas release climbing up to 300 feet above the stack. Lower then that and we were at risk of flames! 

Even at the required 700 feet above, we looked out the windows to make sure, and no flames! We were pretty happy about this one.

The turn around was fast but lacked the proper facilities for the ladies....no running water at the airport so the ladies were required to walk to a small house next to the fire station. Just another mini adventure.

Then  we were on our way to Vienna...I loved hearing the clearance, giving us a SID, and then hearing the word "Flight Plan enroute."...we never got it....except direct to VOR...The office had done a great job on the briefing and we spent some time entering all the way points, some showed up others not so much so it was quite the labor of love to enter all of them into the route. And we received direct to the boundaries of each country.

The arrival into Vienna was also an experience with no STAR assigned followed by radar giving us direct way point on one of the arrivals labeled WW891, which was presented as whisky whisky eight nine one...

We were ready and had a great arrival at the Vienna Airport.

Here is the speed up video of the landing: