Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Leg The First

I decided to start in Wellington, New Zealand. Why New Zealand? It's the country farthest left on my wall map. Why Wellington? Well, it's the capital, and like, dude- Wellington Boots! Never mind.

So, first leg, Wellington International, to Nadi International. Nadi International is on the west side of Fiji, and the GPS says it's 1440kts from Wellington.

Weather in Wellington, partly coudy, broken at 3000, winds from the north at 5. Flight plan a couple of degrees to the right of due north, 354 magnetic (true course offset seems to be about 10 degrees at that location). 3rd in line for departure, took of at 10:34am local time. Full load of fuel. Cruised at FL320 at 280kts IAS, .76M. Handed off from tower to Wellington departure, then to New Zealand center, then Auckland center, to Nadi center, to Nadi approach. Started descent about 150kts out, descended to 7000. Usual bizarre vectors. Descended to 2500 to line up with the ILS, but there was a Cessna Skyhawk ahead, and as a result, I had a run-in with the tower controller AI. About 10 miles from the runway, I had got ahead of the Cessna, but the tower cleared the Cessna for landing first. The limited AI of the program couldn't figure out that a 737 comes in just a tad faster than a Skyhawk, I guess. So get a call from the tower, "cleared to land, follow the aircraft on final." What aircraft? The only one else up here is that Cessna I passed... so when I get to decision height, I get the call to go around. Pinheads. So I go around. Only now, there's a Piper in the pattern, so I'm thinking, "same problem." Only this time, I got cleared to land first. Which I did, with no further incident, on runway 2. At Nadi, the terminal is at the far north end of the airport, so I flared late for minimum taxi, and got out of the way of the Piper, who landed about 4 minutes later.

Wellington International



















Nadi International

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