Officially The Last Day

Friday, 01.November 2013, 05:30

Dietmar's lap top has not charged during the night, we plug it into different sources, nothing, we suspect the power supply is faulty. We also received an email informing us regarding a fuel leak on our aircraft, yesterday we were talking about it, and how well we managed the situation with our aircraft jack.

09h14, as we get to the aircraft we see a bucket underneath the left wing to catch the fuel running out. 

Since nearly 2 hours we wait to be cleared, they don't know what they are doing, they took our passports and now we are waiting, no one in sight. The one person speaking a bit of english has disappeared, before he left he was talking about a lost flightplan; we get the aircraft ready. Dietmar contacts the tower and they tell him they have our flightplan on record and are waiting for us to activate that flightplan.

The guy arrives with our passports, he dissappears again, we assume to organise the invoice. If we get permission to start, we swear, we will leave without paying, we are so fed up. We get permission to start, however, tower can still ask us to shut down. We get permission to taxi and then we are cleared for take-off. We kiss the handling agent Good Bye.

The flight to Odessa will take 3.5 to 4.0 hours, outside temp minus 10 deg C and favourable winds might reduce the flight time. Today is officially the last flying day, and the Around the World Trip ends in Odessa, Ukraine with our farewell celebration tonight. Tomorrow, our first leg takes us to Krakow in Poland to refuel and then on to Hildesheim or Hannover, Germany depending on weather.

And then our "once in a life time" trip ends.

We are above the east/northern part of Turkey, below us villages, mountains and forests and roads connecting them, very nice. 

Soon we will be above 'The Black Sea', leaving Turkey. Mountains go right up to the coastline and now we overfly 'Inebolu', a village right between the mountains and the Black Sea. There is a harbour and wide roads leading into the village.

We have been over water for a long time now and we have 0h45 to go to destination. We also found out that our radio No2 is faulty, it sends but does not receive. Just as well this did not occur before.

When we arrived our handling agent was there, we refuelled, we got thru immigration and in no time we got to our hotel. Once settled I took a walk while Dietmar finished paperwork and scanning.

Herewith some pictures of the Hotel and Odessa.

Architecture in Odessa

Typical street in the city centre

Inside the Hotel Bristol

Hotel Bristol from the outside

At night we had a "Last Night Dinner" and a short speech and a selection of Pictures were shown.

Final Dinner in Odessa

Badges were given to the different crews and a warm "Good Bye" was said to all, we all shared a Once In A Lifetime Experience which we will never forget.