FS9 World Tour: Easter Island to Totegegie

Wednesday, 8 August 2012

Easter Island to Totegegie

DAY 19, LEG 81 - Easter Island to Totegegie

After a night on Easter Island, this leg is an early start in order to make as much progress across the Pacific as possible. Accommodation is hard to come by at some of our planned destinations so we need to give ourselves as much time as possible to reach our overnight stops especially since many of our destinations have very basic unlit runways. Totegegie is a small island that makes up part of the Gambier Islands in French Polynesia. The airstrip serves the small town of Rikitea on Mangareva Island adjacent to the airport site. It's only service is to Papeete by Air Tahiti and the airport only receives a few thousand passengers every year.

During flight planning it becomes clear that despite this leg being shorter than the previous one, it will be marginal as to whether the aircraft will have sufficient range given the headwinds forecast. At FL250, the forecast headwind averages over 80 knots which gives a flight time of some 8 hours! A lower level yields calmer wind, but higher fuel burn. With the flight planning done, it is decided to head to the aircraft and depart as normal, monitoring fuel consumption carefully and making a decision whilst airborne whether we continue or return to Easter Island.

Ready to taxi.

Departing runway 10.

Airborne from runway 10.

As we climb out the headwind starts to build.

With 1200nm to go to Totegegie, it becomes clear that the 57kt headwind at FL190 means we will have 5 hours 40 minutes until we reach our destination. With a fuel flow of 410kg / hr and 2212kg of fuel remaining we calculate an endurance of just 5:25. The decision was made to return to Easter Island.