Flightplan
I always dreamt about flying over the Sahara. I wanted to get a feeling about this endless space in all directions. So, the decision where to go from Tenerife was made pretty quickly. It was an opportunity to cross at least the Western part of the Sahara. Based on that assumption we started to plan our next leg. But the first question was: where should we land?? That’s a question, which can’t be answered that simple. The average length of our legs should not be much longer than 2 hours. This already limits alot the number of places which you can theoretically reach. And once you start studying every airport West from Tenerife within a range of 2 flighthours, you will find out, that there are not many options from safety perspective. Our aircraft has specific requirements regarding the airport. If the runway is too short, we might be able to land, but not to take off anymore. It might be a very hot day and the density altidude leads to the fact, that we might get grounded until the weather turns colder. Besides that, there are a couple of other requirements, which have to be taken into account.
Our first choice was Dakar, but in the end we decided not to go there, as it does not really lead us over the Sahara. In the end, the final decision was to fly to Timbuktu in Mali. Honestly, I have never heard about this airport before in my entire life, and it is not a big airport! But it should be sufficient for what we want to do. So, we planned our trip, which lead us over Western Sahara, Mauritania and Mali. The airport itself is located nearby a big river, so there should be more than just sand and dunes.
To put in in a nutshell: the flight was amazing form scenery perspective. Even it is “only” a virtual environment, one gets a feeling about this endless open space without towns or villages below you. Just sand and dunes as far as you can see from 35.000 ft. What an impressive part of our earth. The flight itself ended without any problems, nice weather and a safe landing in Timbuktu. Pretty unspectacular. But scenerywise it was the most impressive flight so far!
