LSZH Fly-In

The fly-in at Zurich was big fun. As I checked on yesterday morning Richard sent me an e-mail and I found out that he got an early start out of Zurich before the traffic got too bad. Can't say I blame him, though - the traffic was something. But I had a good time anyway. My flight was an inbound to LSZH and it was a pretty long flight for me in the 737-700 with an ETE of 4 hours from Madeira to Zurich. I thought the service was great. Lisbon Center picked me up not too long after liftoff from Funchal, and though he was not entirely understandable we made good progress without embarrassing ATX while traversing his airspace to the north. Chatted up a fellow in an A320 who popped up a few miles behind me enroute to Frankfurt. Lufhtansa does good business in these parts. The good ATC continued all the way to Zurich for the Flughafen Zurich fly-in on VATSIM. Traffic was incredible in the terminal area, but Zurich Center, Approach, and Final Approach were so cool you would have thought it was just a few locals in the traffic pattern. Of course you could tell the difference from the rapid-fire back-and-forth in Center and approach airspace. Spent a bit of time in the hold over GIPOL, but it was a breeze using the Smiths FMS - I'm sold on ISG Simavionics gauges now! Landing was picture perfect - it was hard darkness by the time we made it to the terminal area and cleared for approach. Still, the skies were clear below 6000 and the winds were calm, and I managed an excellent landing off the ILS on Runway 14.