02.01.2021: Another year starts, but this one differently than the last ones. While I have been travelling a lot during the last 20+ years for my job and also privately, the last year has changed everything due to the Covid pandemic. I have not been on a business trip abroad since last February, which is 10 months ago, and I’m sure I will reach the one year mark before travelling again.
This has made work more difficult, as many of my projects are abroad, or international collaborations. One example is the CLUG project, a Horizon 2020 funded research project which is investigating the use of satellite positioning for railways. The project is coordinated by SNCF, the French National Railway Company, with Deutsche Bahn, Airbus and Siemens being the other main contributors. The project was formally started in December 2019, but the actual kick-off meeting took place in January 2020. After one more project meeting at the end of February 2020 (my last business trip abroad mentioned above) the world went into lockdown, since then we have only been able to work together via online meetings, and mostly from our home offices.
One might think that this gave me more opportunities to fly, but this hasn’t been the case. During the first wave last spring our airfield was closed. Once it re-opened, flying was restricted to flights within Europe. There was a period where certain international flying would have been possible, but during that phase another of my project started in Australia, which required full attention. Then most countries started closing borders, or introduced quarantine rules, which made flying abroad nearly impossible again.
As a result I only flew 27 hours last year, which was however still 7 hours more than in 2019.
15.01.2021: We had quite some snow before Christmas, and quite some rain between Christmas and New Years Eve, so Lommis airfield is closed since quite a while Two days ago any hope for the airfield to open again soon were shattered, as record amounts of snow fell, even in the plains where we live. We received half a metre in a day, so flying has to be postponed.