Paris to Rome
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16 July 2007



Pilot Section

General
 
After an enjoyable couple of days in Paris, it is time to resume the flying again. We called two taxis for 0700. Lily and Jasmine headed for Charles De Gaulle airport and a commercial flight back to Southampton, England, while my 10 year old son Hallin and myself headed for the railway station and a train back out to Pontoise to pick up N238JG for our flight to Rome. The plan was to fly to Genoa, refuel there, and then carry on to Rome this afternoon.
 
Our friend Meziane from Ameridair was at Pontoise to meet us – but there was a problem! He had tried to file our flight plan to Genoa but it was not being accepted, and ATC Center at Le Bourget airport would not tell him why. The route I had requested was the recommended IFR route according to Jeppesen, so I called myself and talked to Le Bourget. They were totally unhelpful and I was told “you use Jeppesen at your own risk in France – work out another route and we will tell you if it is acceptable after it is filed!”.
 
We were getting nowhere fast, so Meziane, Hallin and myself piled into Meziane’s van and drove round to the Pontoise Control Tower. There, a very helpful lady from local Pontoise ATC explained (frankly) that French ATC don’t like Jeppesen because it is not French, and she gave us free copies of all the French IFR and VFR charts. She then looked at our flight plan and worked out the very simple problem – The Standard Instrument Departure (SID) required by ATC from Pontoise is actually a Le Bourget airport SID… it doesn’t tell you that in Jeppesen, and we had filed the published Pontoise SID. Hurriedly we wrote out a new flight plan, and the helpful lady keyed it into the computer. Within minutes the message came back – accepted… but with an immediate departure time!!
 
With no guarantees that our ATC slot would still be available if we were late, we raced back round to the Ameridair hangar, and Hallin and I climbed into N238JG. I did my checks as fast as possible and called for startup at 1100 Local time. In between the hurried checks I was selecting the revised SID route into the Garmin 430. Fortunately the new SID was listed in the Navigation Database under Le Bourget, and with all the flying I had done in the last few weeks I was now pretty fast at operating the Garmin 430, setting up the Avidyne MFD system and the other avionics! I would have struggled with this cockpit workload three weeks ago!
 
After the flurry of hurried preparations, eventually we were airborne from Runway 30 and turning towards Paris following the Le Bourget SID. The airspace was busy with commercial airliner traffic and we received frequent instructions and vectors around traffic from ATC as we climbed, but all fairly straightforward. The new routing took us East towards Le Bourget airport, and over the centre of Paris which was a sightseeing bonus that we had not been expecting. Although it was rather hazy and visibility a bit limited, Hal and I got a clear view of the centre of Paris with the Eiffel Tower and Arc De Triomph on the left hand side below us.
 
We then turned South past Orly Airport, and after 30 minutes or so Paris had disappeared behind us and the ATC activity quitened down. We were back on pretty much the route that we had originally requested down through the centre of France towards Lyon, and then to the South Coast where we would turn East for the Italian border and Genoa.
 

As we progressed South the sky cleared to perfect blue, but the high ground temperature was creating a summer heat haze which spoiled our clear visibility of the ground from 11,000ft. Nevertheless, we could see enough to tell that we were passing over some truly beautiful scenery. Listening to ATC as we were about 100 miles from the South Coast of France we began to hear ATC re-routing airliners “due to military activity”, and then ATC called to check our intended routing. Then the inevitable started to happen! Firstly we were given a route change taking us further Southwest over St Tropez due to the military activity. As we approached St Tropez I was surprised to be told to expect the next waypoint to be Lerma and then Elba, 126 miles south of our intended destination at Genoa, but only 117 miles from our final destination of Rome, Ciampino!!
 
We were fortunately already set up for a long distance flight over water, with our survival equipment, liferaft, and lifejackets easily to hand on the seats behind us. My second concern was fuel. We had been flying for 3 hours since departing Pontoise and this new route added considerably to our distance flown if we were to continue to Genoa as planned. I plugged the new route into the Garmin 430 and instantly had a fuel calculation for arrival at Genoa displayed on the MFD showing 28 Gallons remaining on arrival. However, assuming we actually went to Elba it made more sense to proceed directly from there to Rome. I plugged that new route into the Garmin 430 and the MFD showed 9 miles less distance to run, and an improved fuel position of 29 Gallons remaining on arrival in Rome.
 
The third, but probably overriding consideration was comfort. If we continued to Rome or Genoa via this revised route we would have been in the aircraft for 5½ hours when we were only expecting a 3 hour leg. We had the option to call ATC and ask for a diversion into St Tropez or somewhere close on the South coast of France if we felt we needed a break. Hal and I talked about it for a few minutes, but decided we were both OK and we should call ATC for a change of route direct to Rome after Elba. By this time we were talking to Bastia Control on the island of Corsica, with a lot less traffic on the radio than at St Tropez, so I called and requested a flight plan change to Rome, and gave him my proposed routing. He asked me to standby while he spoke to Italian ATC, and within a few minutes he came back with the approval.
 
The islands of Corsica and Elba looked beautiful as we passed overhead with their mountains rising up from the clear blue Mediterranean Sea under a cloudless sky. Unfortunately the heat haze started again as we approached Italy and headed down the Italian Coast, spoiling the clear view. ATC asked us to call ahead to Ciampino Ground and I was surprised to be able to raise them clearly on the radio more than 100 miles out – they must have an aerial up a mountain somewhere! We advised Ciampino that we planned to use Argos Handling, and they allocated us a parking position in advance.
 
Soon we were talking to Roma Approach and flying the Standard Arrival Route (STAR) for the ILS Z 15 Approach to Ciampino ahead of an EasyJet Boeing 737, which resulted in ATC asking us to maintain “Maximum Speed” until 5 miles out on the ILS.
 
At 1616 Local time, 5 Hours and 16 minutes after starting up at Pontoise we were shut down on the apron at Ciampino…. Not exactly as planned, and with the revised route this has been the second longest flight of the whole trip to date!
 
I was keen to check when we refuelled exactly how much fuel we had used, and then calculate manually how much we actually had remaining on arrival, so that I could check any error with the computer calculated indication showing in the cockpit on the Avidyne MFD. The fuel truck arrived promptly and topped up N238JG two fuel tanks to the maximum 92 US Gallons with 230 Litres (61.2 US Gallons) of Avgas 100LL Fuel, meaning that we actually had 30.8 Gallons fuel remaining on arrival at Ciampino today. The Avidyne MFD was calculating we should have 29 Gallons – fantastic, and a great confidence booster that the MFD calculation can be relied upon when making airborne decisions!! Also, great fuel consumption from N238JG. We had not started this flight with great endurance in mind since we planned to land at Genoa after about 3 hours. I had been flying with around 55% Power, “Lean of Peak” at 11,000ft and achieving around 11 Gallons per hour indicated on the MFD and PFD. After a 5¼ hour flight and 724 Nautical Miles ground distance covered, we still had sufficient fuel for more than a further 2 hours cruising, plus some reserve!!
 
Tired, but happy to be in Italy, Hallin and I caught a Taxi 45 minutes to our Hotel, close to the centre of Rome. By the time we got there it was too late for any sightseeing today, but we enjoyed a great Italian meal at the Hotel and went to bed early in anticipation of a hard day sightseeing starting early in the morning!!
 




Pilot Section
 
Here are the details of today’s flight for other pilots and people interested in the details:
 
Departure Airport:        Pontoise, France (LFPT)
Departue & Handling: Ameridair.
Costs:                           Handling:                                       €79.00              (US$107.44)
                                    50% Surcharge (Holiday period?):    €39.50              (US$53.72)
Parking:                                         €39.00 / Day      (US$53.04)
Avgas Price:                €1.84 / Litre (Including VAT)             (US$9.48 / US Gallon)
Detailed Route:            What I filed, what I was cleared for prior to takeoff, and where we eventually flew, as directed by ATC bore virtually no relationship to each other!! Here is the actual route we finally flew today:
LPFT – LE BOURGET MONOT 1M DEPARTURE – MONOT – R161 - MOU – A3 – PERUS – AMFOU – ST TROPEZ – LERMA – ELBA – TIBER – CMP – URB – ILS Z 15 APPROACH LIRA
En Route Altitude:        11,000ft
Flight Time:                 5 Hours 20 Minutes
Arrival Airport:             Ciampino, Rome, Italy (LIRA)
Arrival & Handling:      Argos VIP Private Handling, GA Terminal, Ciampino Intnl Airport,
Rome, Italy
Tel:       +39 06 79 34 05 63
Fax:      +39 06 79 49 45 88



Kids Section

Did you Know : According legend the ancient city of Rome was founded around 750BC by Romulus and Remus, sons of Mars, the God of War. The baby brothers were abandoned and looked after by a family of wolves before being found by a shephard. When they grew up, the brothers disagreed over whether the new city should be built beside the river, or on high ground, and Romulus killed his brother Remus over the dispute - hence the city is called ROME after him.
 
Fun Fact: Rome was the centre of the Roman Empire that dominated modern day Europe and the Middle East for almost 1000 years from around 500BC until the Fall of the Roman Empire in 476AD. Modern Rome is full of ancient buildings and artifacts which reflect it’s rich ancient history.
 
Quiz:  
Answer to yesterday’s Quiz: The Arc De Triomphe situated at the top of the Champs Elysees road in Central Paris houses the Tomb of the unknown soldierThe tomb is marked by the Eternal Flame to celebrate and remember French soldiers who have died in wars fighting for France.
Today’s Quiz Question: This statue is of the Emperor Ceasar. What do the initials SPQR on the statue stand for, and why are they there? 


(Answers on the next Daily Diary!)