South America in a week!

As most of you know, I was in South America recently. It was a long rotation – we started off from Frankfurt to Dakar in Senegal, where we stayed overnight. 14 hours later we were at work again to fly a MD-11 down to sunny Campinas in Brazil, not far away from the buzzing metropolis of Sao Paolo. A huge buffet and a good-nights sleep later we were on our way to Montevideo and Buenos Aires to spend another night in Argentina. After heading over to Santiago de Chile on Air Canada as passengers, our journey home started… The flight from Chile back to Dakar lasted nine hours. Taking off in the afternoon and flying in the dark most of the time, it was a long work-shift for the captain and myself without a crew relief pilot. But we managed okay and soon started our last flight of the rotation to Frankfurt, where we landed just in time to avoid the night curfew…

Photos and Videos

Here is a video of an approach to Viracopos that I took earlier this year:

It did take photos as well! Here is a selection:

As the sun set over Spain, we were able to see some stars on the way from Frankfurt to Dakar!

The apron at Dakar was deserted – there isn’t much going on during the day…

We saw this colourful aircraft on the apron of Viracopos in Brazil. It is AZUL’s latest Airbus A330 that has just started international flights to the United States.

Thumbs up – we are ready to go!

I was sneaking through high grass to get a good shot of the terminal in Montevideo.

Loading during the night in Montevideo.

The speed is set – let’s go to Buenos Aires!

I saw some cool old buildings during my one-hour tour through Santiago de Chile.

But even better where the Andes mountains on departure from Santiago de Chile to Dakar.

There was nothing but desert below us on the way back from Dakar to Frankfurt for hours…

After a week of flying, we are only a couple of hours from home…