21.11.2010: I of course could not stay on the ground during my whole holidays, so when there was a chance to go flying with a Pilatus Porter to a glacier I could not say no.
The mountain in the back on the left is Mount Cook, the highest mountain in New Zealand, the one on the right of it is Mount Tasman.
I managed to sit next to the pilot and when I told me I am from Switzerland he said I should tell the guys at Pilatus that they shall continue making these great planes forever.
Flying in the Porter reinforced my idea that the next plane I am building should have a propeller turbine….
27.11.2010: Today I flew back from Sydney via Singapore to Zurich. There was quite some chaos in Sydney, as it is probably the airport where more Airbus A380s operate than anywhere else. Many of them have been grounded, including all from Qantas, after an engine on one of the Qantas A380s had a catastrophic, uncontained engine failure. Singapore Airlines is still operating theirs, but with some restrictions as they have to take them one by one out of service for checks. The one from Sydney to Singapore was cancelled and replaced with an Airbus A330, which meant that quite some passengers had to be re-booked to other airlines, but the one from Singapore to Zurich flew.
I read that the A380 from Qantas which had the engine failure landed with 50 tons over max. landing weight, as they did not dare to dump fuel, but wanted to land immediately. Quite some secondary damage seems to have been caused by the disintegrating engine, including to fuel transfer pumps that are needed to control the centre of gravity when dumping fuel. That reassures me that if ever I have to land shortly after taking off with 630 kg MTOW I won’t hesitate, even though the max permitted landing weight is only 600 kg….