My cumulus neighbour

One of the impassable borders of the private pilot is the cloud layer present during a flight.

Flying through clouds most of the time means that you put yourself in a situation where both visual flight basic references (ground and horizon) are unavailable. That is when you leave the Visual Flight Rules (VFR) for the Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). For this in Europe, we must hold a Commercial Pilot License together with an Instrument Rating, and we must be regularly trained in respect with the European rules.

To make it short, flying through clouds is unreachable for a private pilot. Except when the clouds are clement towards our small aircrafts, like they were on this picture. In this situation, the thin broken clouds allowed me to keep a visual on the ground and on the horizon even above them.

During this flight back from Deauville, the upper limit of the layer stood at approximately 3'500 feet and I gave myself the opportunity to watch the clouds from above, but I remained modest and only flew 1'000 above them.

It's so nice watching the sunny side of these aerial sheep. Just another good reason for flying !


Toussus - Deauville - Toussus, 2h49.

Flying over remote areas

One of the air transportation's problems concerns the flights above remote areas, like deserts or oceans. These areas can be extremely vast and it is impossible to land there in case of a flight interruption because no appropriate airport can be found.

In the beginning, routes were made so that aircrafts wouldn't fly more than 60 minutes (considering the one engine out cruise speed) away from a suitable airport. This was a safe solution but implied pretty inefficient routes, which were very far from direct.

A first solution was integrated in aircrafts themselves, and some were equipped with three or four jet engines. For these airplanes, the loss of one engine became a less important problem and more direct routes could be used. But the 60 minutes rule still applied to 2-engines aircrafts, still unable to take economical routes.

Today, technological improvements allowed the aviation industry to reach excellent reliability and performance: engines break down with very small probability and 2-engine planes can fly almost normally with one engine out. Thanks to that, interesting routes can be used, thus allowing huge benefits in flight time, burnt fuel and of course CO2 rejected in the atmosphere.
This special use of twin-engine aircrafts is ruled by the ETOPS (Extended-range Twin-engine Operation Performance Standards) standards. An ETOPS approbation works for one air carrier for a given aircraft type equipped with a give type of engine. This way, the conception of aircraft and engines, their maintenance and the tracking realised by the airline are certified to fly further than the 60 minutes limitation.

For instance, Air France's Boeing 777 and their General Electrics GE90 engines use the ETOPS 180 approbation, allowing them to fly up to 180 minutes away (at the one engine out speed) from an airport where a suitable landing can be performed.
This standard allows the airline to use direct routes between France and Asia, flying over Siberia as it was the case when I took this picture.



For a private pilot flying a one engine aircraft, the ETOPS concept doesn't exist: in case of an engine failure we just have to choose a field.

Paris - Hong-Kong, 10h50.


->More details in the Wikipedia article concerning ETOPS standards

Trip around Brittany, Act III

Last act of the trip around Brittany.
We woke up early in the morning to check the day's weather forecast on the Internet, and the situation is great. The sun shines almost everywhere over our territory apart from some thunderstorms in the south of France, but this doesn't concern us. Today, we will follow the coast between Quiberon and La Baule which will be the point we'll say goodbye to the ocean. The route will then be direct to Toussus-le-Noble with a stop at Le Mans to rest a bit and discover a historical airport.

Thanks to nice weather, we enjoyed our day in Quiberon and took-off at 16:00, then we followed the coast overflying the Morbihan Gulf, Guérande and its marais salants (see the picture) just before arriving over La Baule. One turning point 3'000 feet above La Baule airport and then a direct heading to Le Mans.
At 18:06 we landed and we will have the chance to admire in a hangar the wonderful flying replica of the Wright Brothers' Wright Flyer (built by the Le Mans Sarthe aero retro association), which was in fact the first real engine powered aircraft in aviation history.
We took off an ultimate time to reach Toussus, where I performed the last trip's landing.

In the end, 8.5 hours of flying time over three days, some good luck for the weather, an itinerary full of varied landscapes and a fabulous experience concerning navigation, flying and everything that comes with. Aircrafts allow us to travel fast and nicely, and this type of trip can only confirm my will to continue towards the professional way!

Quiberon - Le Mans - Toussus, 3h24.

Trip around Brittany, Act II

The second day of the trip should have flown us from Morlaix to Quiberon, overflying the Brittany's most Western extremity. The plan was then to head to Brest and then reach the south coast and follow it until we reached the Quiberon peninsula. In a nutshell, we planned to fly around the Brittany peninsula.

But that day, Brittany's weather had other plans for us. The warm front which arrived a few minutes after us the previous day had changed into a nice windy cold front in the morning, thus forbidding us to leave Morlaix. After having studied the weather conditions, a few trips to the control tower and some hours waiting in the boarding room, a new plan was defined: the situation is too bad towards West, we will fly a direct Southern route over land to reach Quiberon.

The wind is still strong at 14:00 not long before our departure as the windsock shows: 22 knots and gusting at 25 knots. However it is almost perfectly blowing in the runway's direction and is very steady. It doesn't shows a particular risk apart from having a low groundspeed... with 5 hours of fuel onboard for a 1 hour planned flight, it should be fine.

After a cross-country flight largely disturbed by Lorient airport control, we have a visual on Quiberon peninsula with a very fine weather, what a difference! And how rewarding this is!

We will then land at Quiberon airfield and take our night hosts for a ride around Belle-Ile-en-mer and Quiberon. Then it is the end of the day, full of intense reflexion, doubts and finally nice landscapes.

Morlaix - Quiberon - Belle-Ile - Quiberon, 2h00.

Digiatl trip

Here is a short video from a Toussus -> Pont-sur-Yonne -> Toussus flight. You'll see some castles, some colourful Yonne river meanders, the city of Fontainebleau and its famous forest and finally the Ferté Alais airfield with vintage aircrafts of the Amicale Jean-Baptiste Salis.

One Zero Zero

That's it! Two years and nine months after my first flying lesson I crossed the line, the one that makes the total flight time a three digits counter.

For this special step I realized a navigation through the Sologne (a French region) followed by some sightseeing above some world famous castles of the Loire Valley such as Chenonceau, Amboise and Chambord. Combined with a drink stop at Amboise airfield, all this made an excellent travelling afternoon I won't forget!

It's said that the first 100 hours of flight time are the toughest to get. I will check that...

Toussus - Amboise - Epernon - Toussus, 3h18.

Passenger's perceptions

Passenger [noun] A traveler on a public or private conveyance other than the driver, pilot or crew.

Adapted to air transportation, the passenger's role is to my opinion one of the best occupation we can find. Admiring clouds, cities or fields for hours with a false feeling of slowness and forgetting we are 30'000 feet above ground at a speed that is not that far from the speed of sound. That is a pleasant activity!

As a passenger, reality is so far away that the movement is hardly perceptible. The static window giving us a sensation of immobility, the world seems to be moving behind it. These few laminated glass layers are finally much more than a classical window...

This day, relaxed and having an infinite blue as wallpaper, I almost forgot there were a complete crew of pilots and flight attendants working in this Qantas Boeing 767. There are ingrate jobs!

Melbourne - Sydney, 1h05.

Sea from the sky

Although strongly attracted by everything that can fly, looking at the sea remains something special ad mysteriously resourcing.

As I only need to fly straight for 45 minutes from my aerodrome to join the coast, I recently spent some pleasant time following the Etretat Cliffs at 2500 feet.

And the sea is indeed still magnificent. Especially on this nice spring day where some mist made the horizon undistinguishable because fading between water and sky, thus removing my visual references to immerse me in a vast blue vacuum.

Unfortunately, no horizon is very bad for visual flight rules! End of the dream, it is better turning to follow the coast and thus finding myself again in a 3 clearly-defined-dimensions reassuring referential. I'll wait some more time before being able to fly with instruments without looking outside.

The Etretat Cliffs from Etretat are amazing, but seeing birds soaring around these giant white rocks some hundreds of meters below is definitely another experience.

And that day, I had an exceptional passenger. It's better sharing these moments !

Toussus - Etretat - Dieppe - Toussus, 2h30.

Flying around the runways

A well known basic training exercise for student pilots is flying in the aerodrome traffic pattern, or aerodrome circuit. Without surprise, it consists in realizing a complete circuit around the aerodrome runways.

The goal is making one take-off and one landing separated by four 90 degrees turns in the same direction if possible, so that you finish your circuit where you started it. Not only this exercise is a complete and intense flying training, but also it teaches the student a standard method allowing him to integrate in any aerodrome circuit, positioning himself correctly so that he can land the airplane easily.

On this picture five consecutive aerodrome circuits are shown, and they are far from perfect. The aerodrome circuit has indeed, behind its apparent simplicity, a special esthetic criteria: its rectangularity. The difficulty is in making precise 90 degrees turns, and making them each time at the exact same point. That is not always easy, once factors like the wind or other airplanes flying around you are taken into consideration.

While we are making our noisy turns, people living beneath us are becoming irritated. Sorry !

Over the clouds, the sun always shines

To my eyes, one of the most attracting aspects of an air transport pilot's life is its unlimited sunshine feature!

It must be really pleasant knowing that today at work you'll pass over this low winter cloud layer to join natural light in its purest state.

Yes, this is also a reason why I am fighting against the ATPL (Air Transport Pilot License) and its 14 papers. One day, I'll be able to get rid of those 8 octas of sky covered by condensed water droplets, which preferred hobby consists in ruining our winter without hesitation.

Another solution would be to exile myself to the Atacama Desert in Chile. With yearly precipitations under 1 millimeter I think fog would become a less important matter!