It has been a troublesome few days with very little flying going on.  On approach to Eareckson Air Station I noticed some fluctuations in the T’s & P’s so I got the engine checked out.  Good job too because our PT6 engine had less than an hour life before it would have seized up. The centrifugal compressor in our PT6 engine had failed and we needed to overhaul the engine.  The only problem was that we were in the middle of nowhere so had to get part flown in.  That took us out of the game over the entire weekend.  Since the last blog we made mainland Japan. Our first stop was the New Chitose Airport. We planning to cover some lost time over the next few days and are planning China with our first planned stop at Shanghai Pudong International Airport.

Today we made Denver which is the largest airport in the USA and Salt Lake City. From KSLC we planning an 6am departure to Reno then onto Lake Tahoe.  I have some other things to take care of so my next full blog will be on Saturday where I plan to fill in all the gaps from this week. I hope to write that blog from Juneau our hub in Alaska. The scenery on approach to the airport is breathtaking.

O’Hare was mega busy this morning at 6am wow….  We are heading for Denver today and from here its west until we reach LAUSA AIR’s main hub Metro Oakland.

Made it to Chris Perini’s late last night.. This morning he took me for a trip down the Hudson on his boat as we both like history; the topic for discussion was the American civil war.  Here is what Chris had to tell me about the local history……..

In 1777, General George Washington and the Continental Army marched from the victories at Trenton and Princeton to encamp near Morristown from January to May. Washington had his headquarters during that first encampment at Jacob Arnold's Tavern located at the Morristown Green in the center of the town. Morristown was selected for its extremely strategic location (between Philadelphia and New York and near New England). It was also chosen for the skills and trades of the residents, local industries and natural resources to provide arms, and what was thought to be the ability of the community to provide enough food to support the army.

The churches were used for inoculations for smallpox. That first Headquarters, Arnold's Tavern, was eventually moved a half mile south of the green onto Mount Kemble Avenue to become All Souls Hospital in the late 1800s. It suffered a fire in 1918, and the original structure was demolished, but new buildings for the hospital were built directly across the street.

From December 1779 to June 1780 the Continental Army's second encampment at Morristown was at Jockey Hollow. Then, Washington's headquarters in Morristown was located at the Ford Mansion, a large mansion near what was then the 'edge of town.' Ford's widow and children shared the house with Martha Washington and officers of the Continental Army.

The winter of 1780 was the worst winter of the Revolutionary War. The starvation was complicated by extreme inflation of money and lack of pay for the army. The entire Pennsylvania contingent successfully mutinied and later, 200 New Jersey soldiers attempted to emulate them (unsuccessfully).

During Washington's second stay, in March 1780, he declared St. Patrick's Day a holiday to honor his many Irish troops.

Martha Washington traveled from Virginia and was loyally present with George each winter throughout the war.

The Marquis de Lafayette brought good news here in 1780 of aid from France.

The Ford Mansion, Jockey Hollow, and Fort Nonsense are all preserved as part of Morristown National Historical Park managed by the National Park Service, which has the distinction among historic preservationists of being the first National Historical Park established in the United States.

During Washington's stay, Benedict Arnold wa

We made it to Kitty Hawk First Flight Airport AT 11AM. Make no mistake, this is where the Wright brothers Orville (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912), invented and gave birth to world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on December 17, 1903.

The aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63), the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber AV-19, the aircraft transport ship USS Kitty Hawk (AKV-1), and the Apollo 14 command module have been named for the town.

We had lunch here and left around 3pm inbound for Andrews AFB. We called the National Security Advisor James L. Jones for permission to overfly DC for aerial photography which was granted. The scenery was awesome as we flew north at 200to ft following the Potomac_River VFR. We took many pictures of famous DC landmarks starting with the Pentagon Arlington National Cemetery Lincoln Memorial Washington monument Capitol Hill and of course you can’t go to DC without seeing the White House. We got fuel from Andrews AFB and departed inbound Morrisville New Jersey to see Chris Perini., Lausa Air Director USA. He is taking me out on the Hudson tomorrow morning on his boat to Liberty Island to see the Statue of Liberty.

Didn't end up getting much flying done today...  I left Orlando inbound for our overnight spot Jacksonville airport. We called the NASA Kennedy Space Center for permission to overfly the Space Centre and Cape Canaveral and took some great aerial photo's. The Vehicle Assembly Building is the fourth largest building in the word by volume. The Cape Canaveral site was originally built for the Apollo space program "Project_Apollo" and integral to America's dream of putting men on the moon. The Apollo program was conceived during the term of President Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower did not really take off until 1961 when President John_F._Kennedy addressed Congress and officially declared the national goal of "landing a man on the Moon" by the end of the decade. This goal was accomplished with the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969 when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon, while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit. Tomorrow we are flying to where aviation began. We plan to make Kitty Hawk in the Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina and hopefully LAUSA hub JFK for the overnight stop.

Its 9am local time and today looks like its going to be a good day. After 7 days of flying 86 hours and 14000 mile, we finally made it to the USA landing at Key West Airport last night....  

Yesterday afternoon we left Jamaica for Cayman Islands. The Caymans is a British overseas territory who first ever recorded visitor was Sir Francis Drake who landed there in 1586. I meet Patrick Free who is based in our Orlando Aeromed operation and is the Director Helicopter Aeromed and also a LAUSA helicopter flight instructor. The Bell_412EP H.E.M.S we operate in the UK is still in Bristow Helicopters colours but the Orlando based aircraft has just be sprayed this week in our LAUSA Aeromed colours so JP and Mike brought it over to show it off and that they certainly did that!! He came in very hot and even barrel rolled it at slow speed overhead the airfield. Crazy guy... I managed to catch some of the madness on my video camera.

Today I plan to hit our other two hubs in Florida. We arrived at Fort Lauderdale at 6:30 local and from here its Tampa then Orlando.  Catch up later.

It’s now 8am local. We made the long overnight to St Martin last night arriving this morning around 7am local. Added more sponsors to Papa Sierra. Got a sticky magneto on the ignition system so having that checked out right now so I thought I would catch up with the blogs; Plans for today are Islands hoping toward Jamaica to see my good friend Romario Raffington also a LAUSA AIR Captain trained by yours truly.... I also have a quick meeting at 2pm today with Mr Joe Gonzales, CEO of Air Medical Group who are LAUSA's Main Sponsor. He is in San Juan, Puerto_Rico with this wife Laurie and daughters Anna and Claire. They are just finishing a two week vacation at thier holiday villa on the Laguna del Condado about a 15 min drive from Luis Munoz International Airport which is the busiest airport serving the Caribbean islands. The airport is named after Jose Luis Alberto Munoz who was the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico. The island also has an association with Christopher Columbus who arrived in Puerto Rico during his second voyage on November 19, 149. On July 25, 1898, during the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico was invaded by the United States with a landing at Guánica. As an outcome of the war, Spain ceded Puerto Rico, along with Cuba, the Philippines, and Guam to the U.S. under the Treaty of Paris.

I meet with Joe to discuss extending our aeromed capabilities to one of our Dassault Falcon X aircraft based at Fort Lauderdale which is currently use for business charter only. After the meeting Joe slipped me an envelope which read, from all the staff and management at Air Med Group. Inside was a $100 collected and donated by AMG staff!!!  THANK YOU.!

We left San Juan late afternoon and after a short fuel stop in he Dominican Republic, we were inbound for Jamaica's Boscobel Airport MKBS, near Ocho Rios on the north side of the Island. Looking forward to seeing my good friend Romario this evening. I am staying overnight in Jamaica and our first stop in the morning will be Sangaster, Jamaica. I have to do some shopping for mum!!

Got a call from Alex Darby, a good old friend I worked with in London. I told him about my adventure and in true Darby style his hand went straight into his pockets. Alex thanks for your $20.  Alex is the real deal though, he has been involved in mixed martial arts from a young age, he is a competition standard and his style is 'Muay Thai' which origins are from Thailand. I went to a competition with Alex in 2008 in Birmingham UK. It was the national championships and although after a whole day of fighting and not looking too pretty, Alex made it to the finals. When Alex stepped in the ring for the final fight I took one look at his brute of an opponent and started praying for Alex, he was massive!! It was a proud moment for all his family and friends as we watched Alex 'Knockout' the brute in round 2 with a round-house to the back of the neck... His opponent tumbled like a high rise building behind demolished and needed oxygen as well.

Florida here we come, need to stop in Cuba for fuel and stock up on the Cuban cigars. I wish we had time to pop into Havana the capital but I don’t think we are going to have the time.

JOE & ALEX, THANKS FOR SUPPORTING LAUSA.

Got Papa Sierra re-sprayed at Algiers for $120. I now have the names of all my sponsors on the aircraft. Thanks guys.

Not much to report today just lots of flying and great weather. Took off from Tobruk at 4am inbound Algiers. From there we flew back into Gibraltar which I first visited when I was a young 15year old air cadet. You got to love the rock, its holiday season now so we had to hold about 15 miles out for traffic plus for some reason there seems to be a lot of RAF activity today too. LXGB was formally RAF_Gibraltar a very active RAF station, whilst no RAF aircraft are stationed here now, The 'Rock" as it is affectionately known within the UK armed forces is still visited regularly by RAF aircraft. One my first approach (yes yes I did make two) there was an RAF Eurofighter_Typhoon lining up on the runway departing to RAF Valley.... The designation Typhoon for a fighter is not new to the RAF. The Typhoon or RAF slang ' Tiffy' was designed and manufactured by the Hawker Aircraft Company and the Hawker_Typhoon entered service with the RAF in 1941 as a fighter bomber in exactly the same role Euro fighter Typhoon performs today just 60 years later and probably around £60 million more expensive too lol.

On the approach to Gib today there was a cross wind component of 19 Knots on the approach. It was tricky and wheels did touch but we were still drifting so I powered up pulled the nose up gentle until we had a safe climb speed and carried on climbing again.... It’s been a while since I have made a cross wind approach in something so small. From Gib we flew a 3 hour sector into Tenerife. Just moved some aircraft to this new LAUSA AIR hub but its still waiting for 3 of the 4 aircraft to be transferred from the Metro Oakland fleet and ferried here. Must get onto Tom and find out where his team is with that.

The only member of LAUSA staff here is Jeff Whitton. He is a newbie. I was unsure about him when we interviewed him for the job but boy am I glad Dorothy hired him in the end. He is a great pilot very popular with the cabin crews lands smooth, on numbers and centreline every time and on top of that what a great sense of humour.. He has just been type rated to fly our 737-800 & 900's so he brought the first aircraft over and catching a bit of sun here awaiting further orders from flight dispatch in Oakland. Before joining LAUSA he was, believe it or not an entertainer on a cruise ship and magic tricks were his speciality. We were standing on the tarmac next to our 739 and just joking I said ' Oi you yanks are so tight with your money, come on Jeff, cough up some cash for a good cause ' he smirked, I had seen this before, I knew something was coming. He said ' You brits are always giving us yanks a hard time but us yanks do like to dig deep', then he said to me 'go on Dan dig deep into your pockets'. I reached into my trouser pocket and pulled out a crisp brand new $20 dollar note!!!!!! I was stunned, how had he done that!! I stood rooted to the spot and just clapped my hands at Jeff who was grinning like a cat and looking very pleased he had actually finally managed to get one on me!!! Jeff you the man.... Thanks for the donation buddy. Going to eat at Tenerife and the off to Palma where were having the internal tanks fitted for the flight across the pond. We planning to leave Palma 11pm local time inbound to TNCM St. Martin.

Tom rang me last night. There is a problem with our new Bell 412 G-HEMS based at Gatwick. While an engineer from LAUSA AIR Flight Service Support Team otherwise known within LAUSA as FSST was doing a 50 hour check, he noticed a hair-line fracture in one of the blades and the aircraft is now off line and unavailable for work. We get at least two jobs a day in the UK from AMG so not good. I now have to call Joe and explain that our new toy is broken and we can’t fly Helicopter Aero Med from Gatwick until further notice. Unfortunately we can’t even lease another 412 because Joe has kitted out Mike Sierra with $2 million worth of critical care / life support equipment. Tom told me that he has already called Bristow helicopters emergency on call number and they are sending out an airframe engineer to assess the fracture.

Anyway woke up to thunder this morning and looked out if the window and saw rain. I have not seen rain since London. Alain cannot come to Cairo because he has a conference call with our head of Cargo Chris today and has to supply him Dubai’s cargo profit and loss sheets for last quarter by close of play today. He has spoken with the head of Dnata Ground Handling to ensure I have no delays in getting juice for Papa Sierra...  He has arranged for the fuel bowser to meet me at the ramp at 4.30 am local time.  It’s now 3.30 am and I have only had 5 hours sleep but a very tight schedule to keep. I hope to be in the air on route to Bahrain by 5am local. The food was superb last night, tried some Lebanese food for the first time, extremely tasty it hit the spot nicely. I liked the Mulukhiyah a lot even went back for seconds. Its a traditional stew with mallow leaves, chicken and Lebanese style beef topped with raw onions, and vinegar over rice. Washed down with an Almazaz Beer. Chat more later.

Continued

Dnata arrived at Papa Sierra at 4:30 am local on the dot. Impressive... Fueled up and got the TAF for Bahrain... 00:23Z 14008KT SCT064 BKN160 30/17 Q1004 NOSIG

The lightning started at around 5 mins before we took off. Everybody was silent during the take of roll, you could feel the tension as Papa Sierra lifted of 30R heading straight for the thunder and lightning. It was very rough going for the first 20 mins especially going through the muck at 6,000ft then as we broke through and levelled at 10,000 feet it settled down. We were flying into good weather anyway and Cairo was reporting good weather for today also. From Bahrain we had our long flight of the day. A 6 hour sector to HETB Taba International on the southern border with Egypt and Israel. The flight took us east west over Saudi Arabia, southern Jordan and Israel.

At Taba I called in a favour from an old friend I had first meet in 2003 at a Military Flight Training conference in London. At the time he was Brigadier-General Reda Mohamed, Chief-of-Staff, Egyptian Armed Forces.... but 7 years later he was now an Air Marshal and the current Commander of the Eyptian Air Force. I asked him to provide a helicopter and crew to take me and the crew to see the Pyramids from Cairo airport. He returned the favour he owed and when we arrived at Ciaro at 3:30 local there was already an Air Force Bell 212 waiting!! We unloaded and Flying Officer Ayman Mubarak of the Egyptian Air Force made himself known to me. The next question from me was going to be obvious. Are you related to President Hosni Mubarak, to which he replied “ He is my uncle sir, we are ready and waiting to take you to the Pyramids “. We chatted about his 212 and I was very proud to tell him that LAUSA AIR had just started operating the Bell 412 recently although we had one go unservicable today with a blade fault.

Our last sector for today is a night flight into Benghazi in Libya via the port town of Tobruk both important ports in Operation Battleaxe during the North African Campaign in WWII.

Got an email through on the Blackberry from CITY FLYER Junior First Officer Steven Wagner, he kindly donated $30 via direct transfer into our accounts. THANK YOU STEVEN!!