Matevž's impressions of the fourth stage

The length of the overwater leg from UAE to Karachi in Pakistan was planned to be only a maximum of 5 hours due to strong westerly winds. So I had time for breakfast :D which was interrupted by the ATC guy requiring route changes, which meant a longer stay overwater. After explaining that they are forcing me into a dangerous situation, he allowed me to negotiate with Oman ATC while in the air. Good, but breakfast was ruined because of them. Al Ain airport hosts the military, which was having training flights, so the airport was busy and I had to wait on hold for runway 01 for a long time, which resulted in the engine water's temperature rise to great heights. After take-off and a slow climb to Labri point, I was allowed to leave the Emirates. Oman Atc was kind and let me fly directly overwater, without having to follow long airways. The visibility was very poor, there was some turbulence above land, while the flight was more or less smooth over water, which allowed me to be on auto pilot most of the time. Flying in the soup of sand and black carbon, where you can not see anything horizontally, and you can only sense some blue above and below is simple if you have autopilot, but in case of any malfunction you are in IMC manual flying, which is extremely demanding and exhausting. So even when everything seems to be OK, you are still in constant stress and burning calories. As I was approaching the Pakistani shore, I had to descend below rainy clouds, which washed out Saudi sand from the aircraft. After the sky had cleared again, the visibility still remained bad, so thoughts to take some photos of Nature parks remained only an optimistic wish. The Karachi controllers were kind. They suggested vectors to ILS for rwy 25, but as visibility wasn’t that bad at 7000 m, I asked for visual approach and I was vectored over Karachi city to final 25L. The landing was smooth with some head wind on the west part of the runway to shortened taxiing and engine overheating at 37 degrees.

Photo: Karachi, Pakistan