Oban-Inverness

Friday 21st May, 2010

After just over an hour on the ground at Oban it was time to consider the final flight of the day to Inverness. The first priority was to find somewhere to stay in Inverness, and with a handy guide book and a couple of phone calls this was quickly arranged.

The plan was to make a direct track to Inverness (Dalcross) airport, which was 78 nautical miles away. There was relatively little in the way of navigation to do as we'd be paralleling a chain of lochs the whole way, the largest of which was Loch Ness. There was very little weather to speak of apart from haze and the wind was variable at around 5KT for the whole route.

I telephoned Inverness to book in our flight and made enquiries about the prices for landing, parking and a radar vectored ILS to land. When I had asked about the parking I was told that it would be £4.64 plus VAT, and I'd challenged with "is that per hour?". I recall receiving the rather incredulous reply "no, overnight!".

Having said our goodbyes at Oban, we started at 1635 for our 50 minute flight. Oban had now changed runways so we took off on runway 01 towards the high ground, positioned ourselves to the west of the high ground on the climb out, and set a North Easterly track towards Inverness.

We planned to climb to FL50 which was appropriate to our North Easterly track, and as we climbed the thick haze became apparent. By now we had a basic service from Scottish Information and were squawking their conspicuity code 7401. The Scottish controller was genuinely surprised that we could maintain two-way communications as we flew along the lochs to Inverness. We did recall that the ground staff at Oban had warned us that communications could be difficult on this route, and particularly that Inverness may not be able to receive us if we were more than 15 miles away.

We were now flying up The Great Glen parallel to the lochs, and the haze was creating a somewhat eerie atmosphere. The outline of the lochs was blurred by the haze, and it appeared that the colour had been drained from the vista before us.

Even through the haze, we could find no evidence of the Loch Ness monster, and being rather cynical we suggested that maybe it was a ploy to attract tourists! The Scottish controller, who seemed rather impressed with his ability to communicate with an aircraft over Loch Ness, was ready to hand us to Inverness Radar. We were asked to squawk 6170 and contact Inverness Radar on 122.6. Before doing so we listened to the automated terminal information service (ATIS) which gave much better visibility than we'd had for much of the flight, a few towering cumulus clouds and a light North Easterly wind.

We looked at the approach charts to prepare for our ILS approach. The conditions did not require us to use the instrument approach, but solely for practice purposes we elected to continue with the procedure.

We called Inverness Radar and informed that we were inbound with Information Whiskey with QNH 1030. Quickly the controller replied "G-TT good afternoon, identified on handover; vectors ILS runway 05; descend to altitude 2700 feet QNH 1030; fly heading 360 degrees".

I began a gentle descending left turn onto the new heading and settled at 500 feet per minute rate of descent. As the aircraft was rolling out on 360 degrees, the controller issued a new instruction: "G-TT further left heading 340 degrees". We flew in the descent on the heading of 340 for about one minute before receiving a new steer: "G-TT right 190 degrees, I say again right 190 degrees". The repetition was necessary as turning right was the furthest way onto the new heading, and without clarification we are expected to turn the shortest way to new headings.

We were now heading 190 degrees and level at 2700 feet and by now anticipating a closing instruction to intercept the localiser and glideslope beams which would guide us to the runway. Sure enough, the controller gave us a turn towards the runway: "G-TT fly heading 090 degrees; intercept the localiser from the left; when established descend with the glideslope and now contact tower 118.4, good day".

The localiser needle was now centering so I turned the aircraft to the final approach track. During the turn the glideslope was also centering, so what started as a level turn quickly became a descending turn at 500 feet per minute to follow the instrument landing system. From here on my sole objective was to keep both needles in the ILS indicator in the center. Adjusting the glideslope with elevator and maintaining the speed with power if necessary. The key to an ILS is to get the rate of descent correct quickly and then the workload is drastically reduced.

As the wind was calm it was relatively easy to maintain the ILS approach, and at 300 feet I looked out of the cockpit to see the runway stretched out before me. We landed at 1730 local time and had a very short taxy to an apron that was filled with all manner of aircraft from a Cessna 152 to a Gulfstream business Jet and just about everything in between.

After we had shut down and secured the aircraft, we left for the terminal building to find a taxi to the hotel. In the most bizarre coincidence Andy noticed a Flybe captain walking towards him, and it turned out to be a friend who he'd not seen for 14 years!