Going to Martinique on a Bonanza

[mau92]

I wanted to fly on the beautiful Bonanza, so why not take it for a spin on a beautiful place? That's why the plane is sitting here, at Princess Juliana's apron being loaded up for the trip to Martinique, 250nm down south.

The optimal altitude for today's flight was 12000ft few winds, nice speed and 10.9 GPH were good enough to go. According to the plane's manual we should get a TAS of 161kts, having that in mind, the flight was going to take 1h30m approximately and we were going to burn 16.5 gallons. So we filled up our tanks to half, enough for hour flight time plus 1 hr reserve for diversions or avoiding weather (or stronger headwinds), though the last thing shouldn't be an issue.

 

 

 

 

Soon after the load up was finished, we turned the engine on and taxied to the active.

We left the door open, 30°C is quite hot for a closed cabin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And off we go! Sorry for the people specting the jet blast of a 747. I think they could barely feel a small breeze of the prop spinning on this plane.

 

 

 

 

And so we start the climb to FL120. It should take us around 10 minutes to get there.

 

 

 

 

Enjoying the cruise, and the nice views...

 

 

 

 

Our first waypoint, Bradshaw. So far so good.

 

 

 

 

The mood on the cockpit was nice. Lower temperatures than down there made this cruise very comfortable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to a nice tailwind we got a TAS of 170kts. Well above our intended speed, and having a surprise because we were spectating 10kts headwind.

 

 

 

 

A long water leg was ahead, but not a problem for us, we were plenty of fuel and the engine was healthy.

 

 

 

 

And we got safely to Point a Pitre. We checked that we had enough fuel (if everything was right we wouldn't have any problem). With enough fuel for almost 2hr cruise we were good to go, so we continued to the next leg of the trip.

 

 

 

 

The weather got a bit overcast but nothing to worry about. The sky was smooth and tailwind was of 6kts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sun was setting. We had to hurry up because the airport has an exclusion zone at night just on the zone we are coming from.

 

 

 

 

Lights goes on as the sun does pretty much the opposite.

 

 

 

 

But nothing to worry about, we have land in sight. We make ATC initial contact and they start vectoring us for an ILS approach to RWY10 (09 in my case... default airports). We made in time for the exclusion zone

 

 

 

 

After some minutes and turns, we are aligned and established on approach.

 

 

 

 

The city passes under our wings as we get landing clearance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very short final

 

 

 

 

Long touch down, we want to reduce the taxi as much as possible so we don't interrupt airport ops.

 

 

 

 

And after almost 1h 45m from putting the engine to work, we turn it off. We arrived safely and plenty of fuel. Ready to see what Martinique has to offer!

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading!