Departing Losinj for Olbia, Sardinia this morning. Airport organised a taxi to and from Mali Losinj, 25 euros each way. 50% AOPA discounted fees again. Tower not manned today so called Pula on the phone as it states in the AIP, they confirm that they had my flight plan and a few instructions. Once in the air and past 1000 ft AGL called Pula radar who activated my IFR flight plan clearing me to FL120.
This was the routing that Autorouter gave me. More important was the amount of fuel on landing as there is no Agas at Olbia. Autorouter estimated 45 Gal needed for the flight (from 92 Gal tanks) I was filled to the max at Losinj. Landed with 45 Gal left. That’s enough for our next leg to Calvi in a couple of days or across to the South of France if plans change.
Turning south over Elba gave us a nice tailwind component and we saw A ground speed on 200 knots until the next way point. Some quite long legs over water.
Final for 05 at Olbia.
The GA apron is a very long way away from the GA terminal. We were collected in a car and taken there. Obviously a handling fee here, will post how much when we depart on Wednesday. The bus to the town cwntre stops right outside the GA terminal (bus no.10)15 mins later and only 3 euros lighter we were in our hotel which I had booked via booking.com on my phone while waiting for the car to collect us. Isn’t technology wonderful when it all works!!!
Great pics!
I recognised that first photo right away 
Nice pics.
That’s a big detour to the CHI VOR though. Given the absolutely dreadful weather, wouldn’t it have been simpler with a Z-plan DCT to somewhere near the “a” of Italy, and pick-up IFR there?
No useful airway there. When autorouter suggests something like this, there is a reason for it. Italy often has very big flightplanning overheads, but then in practice, you USUALLY get good shortcuts.
Autorouter did initially offer me a more southerly route, but it then failed validation, possibly due to the NATO operation areas that are active week days. We did get some short cuts, Italian ATC seem very accommodating and helpful in this regard with lots of short cut request being heard on the radio. As for filing a z plan……its IFR all the way for me, I like an easy life, controlled airspace an very little turbulence, very important when your other half flys with you.
Also the CAS structure in N Italy is horrible. I don’t have a current VFR chart for there but it was always a load of Class A which is no good for VFR anyway. It went down to 1000ft AGL IIRC and it was fairly common for pilots to turn off their transponders and…
Just going to finish this thread off as we are nearly back home after our two week trip.
One of the beautiful beaches in Sardinia.
We stayed an extra day in Sardinia due to weather then moved on to Calvi in Corsica. It’s the second time we have been there and just a beautiful harbour.
Calvi have a new GA building, its accessed without going into the main terminal. You can walk to it from the grass apron then taken to the main terminal by transport to clear customs/security. However, on the day we arrived it was manned only by a chewing gum chewing young girl who could not be bothered at all. In contrast Olbia is very swanky! Collected from the apron in an Audi Quattro, a “je suis Le rock star” terminal GA terminal building and manned by super models. The cost of this “handling” was 33 Euros. Total cost for 3 days there came to 92 euros.
Calvi was having some sort of ‘boom boom shake the room" music festival starting on the Friday, so we’re decided to stay only one night there and move on further north to get a little closer to home. We chose Avignon….
We found a little French guest house close the airport. Avignon is a great airport with good facilities, however, having been there before, I seem to recall it had AirBP fuel which has now been replaced with Total. It was very frustrating to wait an hour to be fuelled. Customs at Avignon is 24 hr PNR which meant we could not fly to a non schengen country so we filed LFRD (Dinard) The route north would cross a trough where we would be in IMC for about an hour, but northing nasty forecasted in the SIG weather. When we entered this area there was quite a lots lightening strikes popping up of the MFD so we detoured around them initially heading west towards La Rochelle. Once clear, turned north and resumed original flight plan. During this phase however, I was experiencing some RED X’s on part of the avionics screens on the G1000. Issues always seem to arise when the workload is highest. This may have been due to the strikes nearby. It settled back down when out of IMC, however , given the weather at Dinard would require most of the approach to flown in IMC, I requested a divert to Guernsey where the weather was much better.
One last little flight for us to complete today to return home. 3150 NM and 20 hrs flight time.
EGBE EGJB LFMK LJPZ LDSB LDLO LIEO LFKC LFMV EGJB EGBE
Looking forward to the next trip!!!!
Great trip and report!
Thanks for sharing.
