Ive been offline for a while, work is suddenly picking up, and I havent been spotting for a while. This CASA 212 was a nice suprise.
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I was searching for a picture that was taken of this plane while landing in Manchester (and more importantly the accompanying article) and tripped over this thread. I was the captain that flew this plane when the picture was taken (Nice shots CloudWarrior!!).
A little history on this flight if anyone is interested. This plane was one of the first planes to fly into Afghanistan for our contract where we were hauling mail, people and other cargo to the various bases there. For the record, I’ve hauled several Brit soldiers in this plane in and out of Kandahar. Anyway, it was time for this one to go back to the States for some well deserved TLC. It’s now sporting a new paint job and avionics. A lot of heavy maintenance was done on it as well. It should be back in Afghanistan by next month.
Ferrying a plane halfway around the world in the middle of winter was definitely challenging. The stop in Manchester wasn’t planned. The original plan was for us to fly to Dublin, then on up to Vagar Airport on the Faroe Islands and then over to Keflavik, Iceland. Unfortunately, Euro control would not allow us to fly over Paris from Dijon and wanted to re-route us to the north. This added too much time to the trip, and with the high upper lever winds at that time we didn’t have the fuel to make it. As such, I came up with Manchester as the place to land.
We still intended to head up to Vagar, but after waiting three days in Manchester for the weather to clear up there, we gave up. When we finally departed, we flew up to Stornaway for fuel and then direct to Keflavik.
If y’all are interested, I chronicled the trip on the Purple Board, where I am an administrator. Unfortunately, you’ll need to register to read it, but same as here, all we do is ask for your email address. Y’all are more than welcome to visit.
http://www.purpleboard.net/forums/showthread.php?t=11404
BTW CloudWarrior: You may remember a bunch of folks bringing equipment to the plane after we parked. That was because we landed with a flat nose wheel. It was low when we left Dijon, so we called ahead to have them meet us when we landed. Unfortunately, even more air leaked out while airborne, and as mentioned, the tire was just about flat when I landed. I’m glad we didn’t have to taxi very far!!
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