The 8th of May Highland Airways started a new route
in Wales between Cardiff down south and Anglesey
up north. I was sent to Cardiff to fly the route
for three weeks starting on the 15th.
The workdays on this route is fairly long (12 hours),
and since I was going to fly every day (mon-fri)
for 3 weeks, the company had to give me 9 days off
before and after the work period to avoid getting
the CAA on their back. I took the opportunity to
go back to Norway for a week.
The route is a PSO route (Public Service Obligation)
which means that it is subsidized by the government
and that Highland Airways' bid won the route. We
fly the route twice daily, one in the morning and
one in the afternoon, which adds up to about 4 hours
in the logbook each day.
Cardiff
is the capital of Wales and is a relatively large
city. The airport is approx. 20 minutes west of
the city, and the majority of the traffic is chartertourists
going south with companies like Thomson, First Choice
and MyTravel. As a result of that there are plenty
of exciting types of airplanes around here, like
757, 767 and A330.
Anglesey
is the opposite. The airport is originally called
RAF
Valley and is a military airfield where RAF
does flight training and search and rescue operations.
We are the only civilian company that flies to the
airfield, and they built a brand new terminal just
for this route (even though it's not that big).
The airspace around the field is packed with tiny
Hawk
training jets wizzing about, so it's important to
keep a good lookout.
A big difference from the routes we have in Scotland
is that this route comes with a flight attendant,
so it's got a bit more airliner feel to it. It is
nice to have the opportunity to be served drinks
inflight, even though I rarely took advantage of
it.
The weather had quite the variety to it the three
weeks I was down here. We took off in 225 m visibility,
flew approaches down to minima and had 30 knots
crosswinds on landing. But most of the days the
weather was nice. For two obvious reasons the pictures
I take is only taken when the weather is nice. First
of all the workload is too high when the weather
is bad to start fiddling with the camera, and secondly
a picture inside a cloud isn't very interesting.
I had the weekends off, so I got to see parts of
the area around Cardiff. I went on a daytrip to
a national park north of Cardiff called Brecon
Beacons. Almost all northbound air traffic from
Cardiff and Bristol is routed over Brecon VOR, so
the national park can't be that holy to them. I
drove around not really knowing where I was going,
but ended up on a small road which led to a water
reservoir. I parked the car and found a hill I wanted
to mount. As I approached the top I found that the
hill was part of a ridge which eventually led me
to the highest point of Southern Wales (Pen y Fan,
886 m). After 2 hours and 20 minutes I had been
on top of all the summits around the reservoir.
I got back in my car and drove on and came across
a little "Tea Room" in the middle of nowhere.
Here I enjoyed a pot of tea, a scone and a welsh
cake thing.
I celebrated 17th of May (Norwegian Constitution
Day) amongst Norwegian flags and national costumes.
I found the Norwegian Sailor's Church in Cardiff
and stopped by to see if I could find any Norwegians.
There were mostly older women there, all very nice
and seemed happy to see a new Norwegian face.
I'm sure I'll be sent down to Cardiff every now
and then, as we only have one crew which will be
based there.
