This weekend we’ll be flying to Mannheim City Airport. We’ve been there a number of times before, it’s a lovely destination. The runway is long, the staff are professional but friendly and usually the weather is good. The fact that the airfield is two tram stops away from my Uncle’s house on the Neckar is just lucky coincidence.

Location: Mannheim

Flight Date: 29 May 2009
Sunset: 21:22 CEST 19:22 UTC

Note: Do not rely on other people to gather information for you – and for the love of safety don’t rely on my notes being correct for your flight! Always verify all details yourself.

Airfield: EDFM
Website: Flugplatz Mannheim
Phone Number: 0621-419390
ATIS: 0621-4193966
Hours: Mon-Fri 0500-2000Z, Sat-Sun 0900-1900Z
Frequencies:
Tower 118.400 and 122.5
ATIS 136.550
Langen Radar: 127.5
Runway: 09/27 1066x25m asphalt
Airfield Height: 94 meters (308 feet)
Circuit Height:
Fuel: Yes
Weather Info
Possible Diverts: Karlsruhe EDSB, Egelsback EDFE, Frankfurt EDDF or in an emergency maybe Coleman ETOR

Google Maps: Google Map View

From Wikipedia:

Mannheim is situated at the confluence of the rivers Rhine and Neckar, in the northwestern corner of the state of Baden-Württemberg. The Rhine separates Mannheim from the adjacent Rhineland-Palatinate city of Ludwigshafen. The Hessian border is north of the city. Mannheim is the largest city of the Rhine Neckar Area, a metropolitan area with 2.4 million inhabitants.

Mannheim is unusual among German cities in that its central area is laid out in a grid pattern (called Quadrate, squares), much like many North American cities. The main route through the squares leads to an enormous 18th-century palace. This former seat of the Electors of the Palatinate now houses the University of Mannheim.

Mannheim’s city symbol is der Wasserturm (the water-tower), located in the east of the city centre.

My mother is coming from New Mexico and we’ll all spend the weekend in Mannheim Seckenheim which is a 5-minute taxi ride from the airfield. Seckenheim has a lovely high street with shops and still maintains the feeling of a village. It also has a railway station and tram lines so that you can easily get around the local area without a car. Privathotel Löwen and Hotel Weingärtner are local hotels which I am happy to recommend, although Seckenheim is really the wrong side of the airfield if you are aiming for city centre which is just 3.5 kilometres away.

There is a small snackbar at Mannheim City Airport and I’m told you can get decent snacks there although we’ve never stopped for more than a coffee. The staff are friendly and I found everyone very helpful to GA pilots in both English and German. We are always given easy access to the plane for picking up/dropping off the large amounts of shopping bags I tend to accumulate when I’m back in Germany (Schnapps, Gummi Bärchen, Schinken und Brot).

However, I should share a word of warning about getting flights from Mannheim City Airport: if the pilot is in a bad mood, it is more than possible to miss your flight – even if you are her son!

I was speaking to a friend about flying and she asked about language issues when flying around mainland Europe. These are thankfully few and far between as English is generally accepted or even required for speaking on the radio. I’ve written before about struggling to understand a French controller with a strong accent but generally I know what to expect in a radio call which makes it a lot easier to understand the detail.

It did make me remember a flight into Altenrhein (St Gallen), an airfield in Switzerland on the coast of Lake Constance. It was a gorgeous flight, my first time over the Alps, but it mainly sticks in my mind as the place where I forgot my ABC’s. I became completely confused as to what language I was speaking simply because of the difference in alphabets.

As I was approaching our destination storm clouds had begun to gather and I was somewhat stressed. I was there for the first time and the load was high. Someone spoke on the radio in German – just asking a quick question, not anything critical – and I started feeling serious language interference.

I speak fluent German but I don’t speak Aviation German and even where it might be allowed, I wouldn’t speak German to ATC as it would cause a higher workload for me. I suspect there are a lot of Europeans who are most comfortable speaking in English when it comes to radio communications, simply because that’s what they are taught and the speech patterns and routines are so ingrained.

Anyway, none of this would have made a difference if things were quiet. As I was already stressed and dealing with a heavy workload, the part of my brain that deals with keeping my words straight was temporarily distracted.

At that moment, the controller asked me how I was coming in. European airfields use VFR reporting points for where you can enter their area which are based on the points of the compass: November, Echo, Sierra, Whiskey. Often there are additional reporting points further out which are marked with a single letter.

On this flight, I was coming in via point Z. Zee, I thought to myself, and then immediately corrected myself to British English. I should say Zed, not Zee! I keyed the microphone but somehow that didn’t seem right. I let go as I thought it through. The controller doesn’t sound English. I’m not in England. I’m in Switzerland! How do the Swiss say Z?

I opened my mouth again to speak and the words on the tip of my tongue were: I’m coming in via Zurich. Luckily, the controller chose that moment to ask the question again. That split second delay gave me the chance to work out what I was supposed to be saying. “November 666 Echo X-ray is approaching the airfield for runway 28 via point Zulu.” International alphabet to the rescue!

My brain was faster than my mouth on that occasion, but only just.

We were flying into North Weald, I was in the left seat with Lee coming along for the ride as a passenger. The plan was to pick up Cliff who had been in London for meetings before taking Lee to Newcastle.

Lee is a commercial pilot and ex-CFI. He was flattering, in a backhanded manner, about my ability to fly the Saratoga: “so much better than the last time I flew with you!” I told him that I had been finding it difficult to keep up my hours, to find the time to stay in practice.

“Every time you fly into a small airfield, do circuits,” he said. “Just let them know as you approach that you’ll be doing a touch-and-go and a circuit or two before coming in for your landing. In fact, let’s do that right now.”

I called North Weald and told them that I was inbound to them and would like to do a few circuits before coming into land. He said that he had a plane looking to start aerobatics in 20 minutes but if I was quick, he didn’t mind.

Clearly, the polite thing to do would be to simply get out of the way and I confirmed to North Weald that I would simply come in to land and do my circuits another time. He sounded somewhat relieved as he contacted the pilot of the other plane to let him know that after the inbound PA 32 the field was clear for him to do his aerobatics.

Now one thing you need to know about North Weald is that it is directly underneath Stansted Airspace and as a result, you have to stay under 1,500 feet. As we taxied off the runway, we saw the other plane – a beautiful looking bright-red tail dragger that I later discovered was a Yak 55 – entering a spin directly in front of us.

“Oh my god,” said Lee. It was only at that moment that it dawned on us that he was going to do low level aerobatics directly over us, under Stansted’s airspace, with no margin for error.

I didn’t mean to block the taxiway but seeing the plane flying upside down directly in front of us, I instinctively slowed to a halt and watched, mouth wide open.

The Yak climbed at an impossible angle and then disappeared. We both leaned forward to look up. We saw it plummeting straight down towards us.

I couldn’t really think what I could possibly do to remedy the situation so I did the obvious: I closed my eyes.

I heard the engine gather steam and opened my eyes again to see the Yak climbing away. Lee kept his eyes open – in fact it took a few minutes for him to close his mouth.

The plane did a loop over our heads and then the tower called to ask where we were headed, a subtle hint that maybe we shouldn’t just park on the taxi-way, gawking like kids at the circus. We taxi’d to the other side of the Squadron and by the time we got out of the plane, the impromptu display was over.

The pilot parked the tail-dragger right in front of the Squadron and I was rather tickled to see its registration: G-OHNO

I found a video of the plane (no idea if the pilot is the same) on YouTube. All I can tell you is, I never saw it fly straight and level like this

Last year, Cliff gave me a wonderful surprise for my 40th. He threw me out of bed at some ungodly hour of the morning and told me to pack my bags. Then we drove to Málaga for my do-it-yourself birthday present: a fully-fuelled plane and a flight planned to Marrakesh. Everything was in place for a 72-hour stay in a lovely Riad full of shadowed courtyards and tinkly fountains.

This was also our first time taking the Saratoga outside of Europe. Despite the last minute nature of the flight, I thought I was prepared – Morocco is described as the most European of the African countries and I’d read up on it before. But that didn’t save us from a healthy dose of culture shock.

Upon our return, I wrote this list of ten important facts that Wikipedia neglects to mention:

1. Casablanca Controllers don’t think it’s funny if you respond to a call with “Play it again, Sam.” Not even a little bit.
2. Although Marrakesh is an international airport, they don’t have radar, so you will continue speaking to Casablanca long after it seems like you should have spoken to Marrakesh about your imminent arrival in their circuit.
3. The taxiways are not marked so it is vital that you keep count so that you know where to turn off. Coming in on runway 10, it’s the second right. The follow-me will not appear until you are almost at your parking spot.
4. The nice man who comes out of the follow-me van will offer to “stop you wasting your money on a handling agent” by escorting you to the terminal. He will not mention that that it is a half mile trek in the African mid-afternoon sun to the terminal building and that he has no intention of helping you with your luggage. As you drag your suitcases across the tarmac he will shout at you to watch out as the service agents whiz past in their vans. He’ll expect a hefty tip for doing so (although, to be fair, less than the handling agent would have charged).
5. You need a Shell card to buy fuel on credit in Marrakesh. The fuel man will tell you they take all sorts of different credit cards. He has a stack of paperwork to prove it – photocopies of all the different cards they accept. He will make you look at every one to confirm that you don’t have it. They are all variants of Shell.



6. The old city is only about 15 minutes away by car. Your taxi will stop at random places en route to your hotel. The driver may lean out to speak to friends or even jump out of the car and dash into someone’s house. It’s not a set-up – he’s simply getting directions.
7. Once in the old town of Marrakesh, do not buy orange juice from market stalls that don’t show pricing. The price jumped from 3DH (40 cents) to 50DH (almost seven dollars) at neighbouring shops.
8. Bargaining is expected in the souks and described as a national sport. If you are polite and give reasons why you think the price should be less whilst being flattering about the product, you will generally find you can purchase things for 50% of the price originally demanded.
9. You can not replace your borrowed maps with up-to-date VFR maps in Marrakesh. They will tell you that you need to go to Casablanca to purchase local maps. When you point out that it would be nice to have them here to follow the VFR routing out of Marrakesh, they will agree and explain that they were told they had to stop selling them because they didn’t sell enough.
10. Remember the fuel man who told you that you could purchase your AVGAS with cash? What he meant was “cash with a receipt from the bank” as opposed to the cash you drew out of the ATM specifically to pay him with. He will refuse to sell you gas without a bank receipt. You now can’t get MORE cash because it is illegal to take Dirham out of the country. Bring a Shell card.

I’m hoping to return to Marrakesh this summer – I’m longing for another Dinner in Djeema and I need to restock my stash of spices and Moroccan tea. This time I shall hopefully be a little bit better prepared!

The best thing about going away is the amount of interesting and intriguing articles waiting for me to read once I’m safely back home. This week, join me in catching up on some of the most intriguing aviation pieces to have landed in my in-box.

First of all,a hat tip to Plastic Pilot who linked to this incredible video of a runway incursion (almost two!) at Providence with a lost jet and a controller who can’t see that it has ended up on the active runway :

For thought-provoking discussion on current aviation news, I recommend popping by Aviatrix’s blog for these two posts:
Cockpit Conversation: Choose Your Own Misadventure

Indonesian pilot Marwoto Komar has been sentenced to two years in jail after being found guilty of criminal negligence for attempting to land a Boeing 737 in the wrong configurations and at almost twice the normal speed. The jet overran the end of the runway into a rice field. Twenty-two people were killed and fifty were seriously injured in the crash and ensuing fire.

Cockpit Conversation: Suicide By Cop F-16

My favourite little detail was that Adam reportedly landed with thirty minutes of fuel remaining. Maybe it was a coincidence, but I like to think that his flight instructor drilled air law into him so thoroughly that even while suicidally defying an international boundary and armed jets, he couldn’t disobey the mandate to land with half an hour of gas in his tanks.

I admit that I am easily amused but I did enjoy taking a look at these tributes to poor Captain Sully:
Sully Sullenberger Song Tributes on YouTube: Heartfelt, Yet, uh, Strange – The Middle Seat Terminal – WSJ

In other spots, the song isn’t strictly speaking, accurate.

He was driving that bus that lost its wings and he made it fly
through the clouds up above he saw an eagle and a dove,
And brought peace.

Not to be a stickler, but the Airbus A320 never lost its wings. It lost both engines after a bird strike which was with neither an eagle, nor a dove, but with a flock of Canada Geese – a species that would have rhymed with “peace,” by the way. But hey, that’s poetic license for you.

The pilot in this photo is not from Angola Airlines, the plane is not a 737 and the landing is at the intended destination. How do I know? I took the photograph of Cliff landing the Saratoga at Lisbon. Still, now I can say that I live with a famous pilot who was featured on Wired:
Whoops! 737 Lands At Wrong Airport | Autopia

The Boeing 737 was to land at Lusaka International Airport in Zambia but instead touched down 10 miles away at an airfield used by the country’s air force. The pilot realized he’d screwed up just before landing – the fighter jets had to be the first clue – but worried that lifting off again would panic his oblivious passengers. He proceeded with the landing and the airline loaded everyone onto a bus for the ride to Lusaka International.

And finally, thanks to the many people who sent me this utterly amazing emergency landing on Havendale Boulevard after an engine failure. The pilot’s flight instructor commented: “Watching that video, he was just awesome,” Amundsen said. “I just hope, you know, if I ever have a situation like that I can be as cool as Kyle was.” Don’t we all: