FA Cup Flying Adventure: Pre-flight

5.30 am 17th December 2005. My alarm clock went off and I was out of bed like a shot.

Today was the day of the FA Cup semi-final between Manchester United (my team) and Newcastle United at the Cardiff Millennium Stadium.
The reason I was up so early, I was due to fly myself and three Geordie mates to the match. Kick off was at 3pm and we had an arrival slot for 11.08 BST.
We didn't have a backup plan to get to the game if the flying was out as that would have meant leaving Newcastle before 5.30am in order to make the long journey by car.

I was exceptionally nervous.

I'd been watching the weather reports for a week and they had consistently predicted bad weather on Sunday, Today.
I looked out of the window to be greeted with a perfect clear blue sky! I logged onto The Met Office to check the TAF's.

TAF
CARDIFF EGFF 170310Z 170413 150 11KT 9999 SCT025 BECMG 1012 700 RA BKN014
NEWCASTLE EGNT 170309Z 170413 17003KT 9999 FEW020 TEMPO 0410 4000 BR

METAR
CARDIFF EGFF 170450Z 12009KT CAVOK 03/01 Q1006
NEWCASTLE ENGT 170450Z 00000KT 9999 FEW035 01/00 Q1006

My fears were realised. The weather in Cardiff was due to rain, but that wasn't due to start until sometime between 10am and 12pm, the report for the return leg looked better with Newcastle having just broken clouds at 2000ft and 4000ft.

As I really wanted to go to the game and didn't want to let my mates down, I concluded that the weather would be above my minimum's and so it was all systems go! (note to self, this is very bad practice for pilots, and I should be just as happy not to go if the weather looks bad!)

It was 6.15 a.m. I was up dressed and had had some porridge and bananas for breakfast, I figured I needed the energy for the flight ahead, and I was half way through updating my flight plan and vectoring in the current forecast high-level winds, when my phone rang.
It was my mate Jonny, too exited to sleep ringing up to check if the weather was OK and tell me he was coming round to meet me.

I told him the weather was OK but it'd be close and we had a headwind all the way there, so that would add half an hour onto our flight time. We'd best get going so that we could take off at 8.30 sharp in order to make our arrival slot.

I'd faxed through my flight-plan the previous evening, with flight time estimated at 100 knot airspeed and no wind. At that speed we should be taking 2 hours and 15 minutes. With the current wind added we'd be taking 2 hours 45 mins. With 4 blokes on board we couldn't have full tanks due to weight and balance and I'd been at the airport the night before making sure that we had enough fuel on and were within limits.

We actually had 3 and a half hours of fuel on board, (which was slightly overweight but still in balance) and I figured that with both Newcastle (EGNT) and Cardiff (EGFF) having such long runways we'd be OK for takeoff and with two airports (Bristol and Swansea) within 15-20 minutes flying time from Cardiff we had enough endurance.

After picking up the other two passengers, Northy and Stuz, we were off to the Airport.

Everyone was in high spirits, and Stuz who was nervous of flying was even exited. I was trying to shut out the chatter and get my head into pilot mode. I wasn't having much luck and kept doing the time/speed/distance sums over and over, worried that I'd miscalculated.

We arrived at the GA terminal of Newcastle. It was a lovely day!

I pushed the Piper out of the hanger and began my walk-around checks. Stuz took one look at the size of the PA28 and went for a cigarette! :-)

The walk-around ritual had the usual meditative effect, and by the time I called the guys over to get in the plane, I was fully focused for the task ahead.