Pancake Airlines - Annecy Meribel april 2010

After visiting Aero 2010 in Friedrichshafen we flew along the northern side of the Alps towards Annecy. Good idea to practise our IFR skills in not all to difficult situations because our departure was a bit rusty. But it’s coming back again so we should be ok when circumstances get a little less comfortable. Easy drive from Annecy to Meribel with a local rental car and 3 days of perfect skiing in the last week of the season over there. Loads of sun and perfect pistes if you pick the right ones.

Monday also started fine, but later in the afternoon it suddenly started snowing. In no time everything was white again from about 1000m altitude. We seem to be on the very border of a bad wheather system in Italy and the very south of France. Does not help for our plans to fly back to Holland the next morning. Luckily the thunderstorms stay south of us and the cloud cover does not look to thick, but still we don’t have a wheather radar and no de-icing. Freezing level is around 3000 feet early morning.

Just a couple of minutes after our departure we manage to get on top of the clouds and climb further to FL100. No ice, no problems. The IFR routing through France does not allow you to fly in a straight line to Holland, we have to follow most of our filed plan via Dijon and the east side of Paris. Around Paris we encounter a not to active little front system, and we wonder what will be the effect of the minus 8 degrees flying through these clouds. No ice again, and the rest of the flight is nice and easy towards Eelde.

Sander is currently in it’s last week of training on the Baron at KLM Flight Academy. Today he is allowed to take Har and Michelle along, so we are going to have a look as well.