Kingfish
April 12th 07, 05:57 PM
Just got back from a week of flying Caribbean charters in the Pilatus.
We were based at San Juan, PR (SJU) and flew a bunch of trips to St
Bart's, St Maarten (the place with all those cool widebody landing
photos on Airliners.net) St Croix, Nevis and Mustique. St Bart's and
Mustique are tied for trickiest landing - pilots must be certified to
land at St Bart's due to the 1600ft usable length when landing runway
10 (crazy winds make this exciting). Rwy 28 approaches over the water
and you land right over the beachgoer's heads.
Here's runway 10 from near the top of the hill at St Bart's. An
overrun puts you in the sand (or water) among the tourists. Not
recommended.
http://stbartstourist.com/content/img/f175691/airport.jpg
Mustique's runway starts downhill like a ski ramp and requires an
immediate turn after liftoff to avoid a hill. Both fields are VFR only
and close after sundown. Here's the runway at Mustique. This is where
the Jamaican bobsled team trained before the airport was built. <G>
http://www.caribbeanmag.com/images/articles/The_Grenadines/Mqsairport2.jpg
International flying is different, and dealing with 4 different
agencies on one flight is interesting. It took a bit to get up to
speed on procedures, but VFR rules seem to be fairly universal. The
San Juan - Mustique trip (500nm) started with San Juan Approach/
Center, then Juliano (French controllers) then V.C. Bird (Antigua)
then Piarco (Trinidad). I swear some of those guys were driving cabs
the day before they started working aircraft. At the height of a busy
day at St Bart's the tower controller got stressed out & decided to
take a break for 45 minutes and left. It's an odd situation, as the
controller will assign sequence and make blind traffic callouts, but
the pilots decided which runway to land on. Can't wait to go back next
season <G>
Thank God for strong brakes and reversing props!
We were based at San Juan, PR (SJU) and flew a bunch of trips to St
Bart's, St Maarten (the place with all those cool widebody landing
photos on Airliners.net) St Croix, Nevis and Mustique. St Bart's and
Mustique are tied for trickiest landing - pilots must be certified to
land at St Bart's due to the 1600ft usable length when landing runway
10 (crazy winds make this exciting). Rwy 28 approaches over the water
and you land right over the beachgoer's heads.
Here's runway 10 from near the top of the hill at St Bart's. An
overrun puts you in the sand (or water) among the tourists. Not
recommended.
http://stbartstourist.com/content/img/f175691/airport.jpg
Mustique's runway starts downhill like a ski ramp and requires an
immediate turn after liftoff to avoid a hill. Both fields are VFR only
and close after sundown. Here's the runway at Mustique. This is where
the Jamaican bobsled team trained before the airport was built. <G>
http://www.caribbeanmag.com/images/articles/The_Grenadines/Mqsairport2.jpg
International flying is different, and dealing with 4 different
agencies on one flight is interesting. It took a bit to get up to
speed on procedures, but VFR rules seem to be fairly universal. The
San Juan - Mustique trip (500nm) started with San Juan Approach/
Center, then Juliano (French controllers) then V.C. Bird (Antigua)
then Piarco (Trinidad). I swear some of those guys were driving cabs
the day before they started working aircraft. At the height of a busy
day at St Bart's the tower controller got stressed out & decided to
take a break for 45 minutes and left. It's an odd situation, as the
controller will assign sequence and make blind traffic callouts, but
the pilots decided which runway to land on. Can't wait to go back next
season <G>
Thank God for strong brakes and reversing props!