0
How do you define "long flight"?
Posted by Brian
on
8:24 PM
The last few flights I've experienced have been long. Actually, the time spent in the air was relatively short. It was all the delays and missed connections that made the trips long. Today was different.
I flew home today with Agape Flights , the mission that delivers our mail to the DR every week. We left Venice, FL around 6:30 this morning and flew to Eleuthra in the Bahamas and refueled. We then stopped at Cap Haitien to deliver mail and packages, followed by quick stops in Port Aux Prince, Santo Domingo, and finally Santiago around 4:30. All in a single-engine Cessna Caravan, a workhorse of the skies.
As long as it was, it wasn't at all unpleasant. The flight was broken up into two-hour or less segments, and because the cabin wasn't pressurized we were always at 11,000ft or lower, so the views were amazing. Plus, I got to wear a headset and listen in on all the communications with the various flight control centers and other aircraft. It was also sobering to visit Haiti. One of these days I'll post some video of the landscape. Because of deforestation, Haiti looks like the moon compared to the DR, and in Cap Haitien especially you can see where hundreds of homes were swept away by flood waters and mudslides, the result of nothing being left on the hillsides to hold the rainwater.
I would have missed so much if I had taken the quicker chartered flights. Faster isn't always better.
|
I flew home today with Agape Flights , the mission that delivers our mail to the DR every week. We left Venice, FL around 6:30 this morning and flew to Eleuthra in the Bahamas and refueled. We then stopped at Cap Haitien to deliver mail and packages, followed by quick stops in Port Aux Prince, Santo Domingo, and finally Santiago around 4:30. All in a single-engine Cessna Caravan, a workhorse of the skies.
As long as it was, it wasn't at all unpleasant. The flight was broken up into two-hour or less segments, and because the cabin wasn't pressurized we were always at 11,000ft or lower, so the views were amazing. Plus, I got to wear a headset and listen in on all the communications with the various flight control centers and other aircraft. It was also sobering to visit Haiti. One of these days I'll post some video of the landscape. Because of deforestation, Haiti looks like the moon compared to the DR, and in Cap Haitien especially you can see where hundreds of homes were swept away by flood waters and mudslides, the result of nothing being left on the hillsides to hold the rainwater.
I would have missed so much if I had taken the quicker chartered flights. Faster isn't always better.
|
Posts
