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jemauvais January 4 2010, 11:03:11 UTC
BTW, the instructor I was referring to is Capt Rod Blievers.  He's quite proud of his Kai Tak plate.

Capt Adrian Bayley also used to fly for CX and he did a presentation on the IGS 13 once.  You can talk to either of them about the IGS because they will speak of it with fond memories.

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jemauvais January 4 2010, 18:27:44 UTC
Most of them do: Schwert, Neasmith, Ockenden, Fusco, Utermark, Day, MacCauley, even O'Moore.  But no one can beat Bosscheiter when it comes to stories, hahahahahahaha!

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mc_2 January 4 2010, 04:44:15 UTC
This post is so cool.

If you ever have to land at RWY 13 for the first time as co-pilot, do you get any prep other than simulator? Will you get to execute the approach and turn. Wah, my mind boggles at the coolness of it all.

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mc_2 January 4 2010, 08:06:57 UTC
Oh no, its such a landmark that I didn't realise it's not in use anymore. No wonder I felt it funny why you used the past tense. :x What a pity.

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jemauvais January 4 2010, 16:07:13 UTC
Yeah, what a pity indeed!  I don't know what kind of special training you have to shoot the IGS approach other than sim sessions.  Maybe you have to fly in a few times as PM before they let you do PF, and you need to be specially checked out by a check captain before you can fly PF into Kai Tak.

I'm itching to try it for real (I mean, as real as I can get), so Flight Experience, here I come!  Now if only they still have it in the B777 full motion sim (I heard that they might, so fingers crossed!)

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mc_2 January 4 2010, 17:05:01 UTC
Yeah cool as it is, I think most people's balls will shrink when they actually try it for the first time.

Can try in computer flight sim. :x

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nilmandra January 4 2010, 05:38:24 UTC
This is such a geeky post but a great read :) I kind of wished I had the experience of flying into Kai Tak airport but then knowing how hairy the landing is, maybe it's just as well!

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jemauvais January 4 2010, 11:15:09 UTC
Heh, I got so carried away writing it I was worried that it would be hell of a boring to non-pilots.

Well, for the last 24 years of operations there was only 1 fatal accident, so chances are you'd have made it OK!  I wish I had the chance to fly into Kai Tak for real!

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randomtab January 4 2010, 07:49:38 UTC
Unfortunately (or fortunately) there probably won't ever be another airport like this again.

The other really interesting airport (from a user perspective) is Gibraltar. The airport runway is parallel to the Gibraltar border with Spain and a major road intersected the runway. It was quite funny - you had these security guards chasing pedestrians off the runway and lowering the barrier when an aircraft was about to land, much like how the barriers would come down across a road for a train to pass through on level-crossing railway tracks. But then that was almost 10 years ago - i suspect its all changed now after 9/11.

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jemauvais January 4 2010, 09:03:07 UTC
Actually they still do that at Gibraltar Airport.


... )

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jemauvais January 4 2010, 09:27:22 UTC
Oh and while Kai Tak was the most famous (and most-used) airport with a supremely tricky approach, there are others which are lesser known, like Austria's Innsbruck, Honduras's Toncontin, Madeira's Funchal (also known as the 'Kai Tak of Europe'), Bhutan's Paro, Nepal's Tribhuvan, and not forgetting too St Maarten's Princess Juliana.

Personally, the one I think is most scary is the Innsbruck approach.  It even says on the plate, "This approach requires special training."  The approach itself is fairly straightforward but you have to deal with the strong alpine winds coming into the valley, and if you screw it up, the missed approach is totally insane.

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blogwithbaby January 4 2010, 08:21:01 UTC
good gravy - this is as close to a LJ Thesis as I have ever seen!

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jemauvais January 4 2010, 16:07:53 UTC
So when are you going to write an LJ entry on schizophrenia? ;)

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blogwithbaby January 4 2010, 23:49:50 UTC
pass - i've reached this stage where work stays at work... (although conversely, blogging and FBing certainly do creep into worktime :D )

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jemauvais January 5 2010, 10:48:48 UTC
Heh, your work can be more interesting than you think to other people than it is to you! ;)

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