Night run – impressions from a charter flight

It is 8.30 in the evening but the briefing room is not empty. We are getting ready for a long trip. Destination: Palma de Mallorca, the capital city of the Balearic Islands. We are the opening flight of the season for Ecotours, the Polish travel agency. We discuss the weather… convection thunderstorm cells have risen all over Europe but they are collapsing as night sweeps over the continent and will not pose any danger. As we board the crew bus that will take us to the airport, it is raining hard already.
The inbound flight, aircraft Papa-Alpha, arrives on schedule. A few funny remarks are exchanged with the incoming crew as they leave for their well earned rest and the passengers are starting to board already. The tour organizer must have known something, we have a full house. 180 guests are expected on board. I type our route into the flight management system: two thousand two hundred and nineteen kilometres… a long leg by any measure. A bit of confusion arises with the seating in the passenger cabin but the girls master the situation in no time at all and we can close the doors.

We push back and start the engines. As soon as possible we signal with a thumbs up to the ramp engineer that everything is OK. Why should he be soaking out there longer than necessary? I release the brakes and we taxi on the tarmac that is more a collection of repaired potholes than concrete. There are pools of water everywhere… In a little while we reach the taxiway where the pavement conditions are much better. Almost as an afterthought the tower issues our clearance:
“Wingair2010 wind zero-one-zero degrees six knots, line-up runway two-niner, cleared for take-off.”
I set the throttles to Flex and read aloud: “Manual flex fifty-six, SRS, autothrust blue.”

There comes the familiar sensation of acceleration, pushing my body into the seat. Rain drops on the windshield morph into irregular lines of moisture. The annunciator calls “power set”, “hundred knots”, “V-one”, “rotate”… Slight back-pressure on the sidestick and the 70 tonnes airplane raises her nose obediently to be airborne a second later.
Almost immediately we are given a direct to DEDOL. We get a glimpse of brightly illuminated Warsaw before clouds envelope us. We switch on the engine de-icing and a little later our landing lights shine on huge snow-flakes rushing towards us at incredible speed only to divert the last minute as they follow the airstream around the aircraft.
The cloud top is at 8000 feet and as we soar above the layer of clouds the vista is beyond imagination. It is almost full moon and the towering clouds bask white in its light. The sky is teeming with stars where the much brighter moonlight does not reach. There is no air pollution, no light pollution from towns and cities, everything is crystal clear here. We switch off or reduce all possible light sources in the cockpit so that we may enjoy the sight better. In the meantime we ask a small diversion, 5 degrees to the right, to avoid a cell… in the end it becomes 15 degrees and even then we “wash” the left wing a little.
Slowly we reach our cruising level of 36 thousand feet and tune in Rene, the captain’s favourite Dutch radio station. The best hits will accompany us all the way down South. As we leave Poland the cloud layer below us also slips behind and we can see the big cities… the lights of Vienna, Prague and Bratislava shine at us from below.
Entering Austria we are met with new white blobs but those are not clouds. The realization hits home hard… we are looking at the snow covered peaks of the Alps, illuminated by the Moon. The infinite variety of the scene is simply too much! A few shooting stars streaking across the velvet sky only add to the wonderful spectacle.

The mountains disappear behind us under the wings as we approach Milan, flying over the city centre we can even discern the famous Dome.
More mountains appear, these are the Southern flanks of the Alps-Maritime. On the left Monaco and Nice are clearly visible and turning South-West we cross the shore line.
Ibiza, Menorca and Mallorca are shrouded in clouds. The weather system that had caused the earlier thunderstorms has not completely dissipated yet. We play hide and seek in the moonlight among the white puffs of cloud and then all o a sudden the brightly lit capital, Palma, appears.
We fly out over the sea, drop flaps and landing gear and with a right turn line up on the final to runway 06L The approach lights start in the water… At 800 feet I take control of the plane. The lights slip in under us and we touch down on schedule. I click the thrust reverser into idle. It is not polite to use full reverse at this time of day, the noise would be a serious nuisance to the peace of those holidaying on the island.

We leave the runway on taxiway N2 and after a few turns sneak up to the airbridge assigned to us. It is 54 minutes past midnight.
I don the high-visibility vest and walk down from the plane. In spite of the late hour, the temperature is still 18 degrees Celsius. I set the fuel uptake. We used 7.1 tons coming down and will carry 9.1 for the return trip. It should be more than enough.
I walk around the aircraft, checking for damage, birds, flack… whatever. I am on Mallorca! The gentle breeze brings the scents of the sea.
Fuelling is finished. I click the fuel access panel latches closed and give a pat on the belly of the big bird. I sign the fuel slip.
I say “Gracias” exhausting in one go most of my Spanish knowledge.
As this was an opening flight, we are returning home empty but we can only take off at two in the morning since Warsaw will not allow us in before five am. We spend the time until departure in the seats, backs reclined, trying to rest as much as possible.
Finally it is departure time. We taxi to the runway and with our take off mass of only 53 tonnes, we climb like a homesick angel. We reach our cruising level in no time at all and the girls come to the cockpit to chat in turns but by the time we are halfway home, sleep overtakes them. We reach the European continent at Genoa and from there fly towards Bratislava. Looking to the right I can see clearly the towns of Mosonmagyarovar, Gyor, Komarom and of course the Budapest metropolitan area.

There is my home, in that direction but I will only get there some time tomorrow. First we have to get to Warsaw.
The first signs of dawn appear on the horizon at 3.40 but since we are flying East, it becomes daylight in just a few minutes. We touch down on runway 33 at 0500 on the dot. It is early morning and the airport is just starting to stir.
We say good-by to each other, escaping from the aircraft as quickly as possible so that everyone may start their rest without delay.
The thoughts and impressions persist. Half asleep everything feels so uncertain. Have we really been there??