This last trip, I was away from home for 11 days, and flew one, 6 hour and 30 minute flight. Not the optimum crew utilization. My only "live flight was from Leipzig, Germany to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. We carried 308 troops on their way to Afghanistan.
Some of my non-TSA approved passengers.
I didn't do much in Bishkek, but stay at the hotel. The mountains around the city are beautiful.
I haven't been to Leipzig for a while, so it was fun to have a few days to kick about. I was hoping to see my friends the Bauerfeinds, but they were on vacation to Croatia. I did get to attend church and was invited to spend the afternoon with the stake president and his family, it was fun.
LDS chapel in Leipzig, Germany.
This chapel was built before the wall came down around East Germany. These members have many cool stories to tell.
I was scheduled to fly at least four more legs, but the aircraft I was to fly had a problem. This is a picture from the tail pipe of the number one engine on an MD-11. You do not usually see fan blades piled up like this.
At about 13,000 feet, taking off from Leipzig the crew heard what sounded like a compressor stall and then experienced a catastrophic engine failure. Not the best of days, but the MD-11 has 3 engines - so, no big deal if we loose 1.
Because of that crews bad day, I got to go home early as I had no plane to fly.
