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The (not so) Ugly Country - Part 5/7


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Welcome on board of China Eastern Airlines! Today's flight will take us to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet!

 

The airport is situated in Gonggar, 45 km / 30 mi to the south of Lhasa on the banks of the Yarlung Tsangpo River, also called Brahmaputra (the muddy line south of the mountains). As you can see, this flight will take us over the "hump".

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Here you can see our routing on the official China enroute charts. Our route is in red, while the prescribed escape routes are in turquoise. All altitudes are in meters! Beginning with UPGED, we'll use the famous L888 before we turn left onto W9 at BIGOR. The minimum altitudes on these legs are always above 6000 m / 20000 ft, the only exception being the first leg on L888 between UPGED and NIVUX with "just" 4122 m, while the highest minimum altitude is between between GOMON and ELNUN with 7051 m. That means that our aircraft has to be specially equipped to provide passenger oxygen for at least one hour. Click on the image to view better.

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Here we are at the gate in Kunming. I promise that I'm going to show an absolute minimum of airport pics.

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And lining up on the north runway ...

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... before we get a spectacular take-off over Kunming.

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The Dian Lake.

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Heading to the mountains!

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They are cute and cozy in the beginning.

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Several large Asian streams, one of them the Mekong, run parallel, seperated by the mountains. We see none of them here.

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Difficult to call it ugly today!

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But I cheated myself: I chose the best instead of the worst.

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Probably the lake called "Er Hai" and the city of Dali.

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This picture shows the L888 with the escape routes that I drew on the ND.

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Probably a mountain called Yuelong Xueshan. Who knows?

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Its peak should be covered in snow ...

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Farther north, the landscape changes to barren.

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Heading westward over Tibet.

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The visibility changed during the flight. Note the ugly cloud shadows. At least something ugly!

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Not very ugly, I admit.

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Steep canyons host foggy weather.

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Near the bend of the Brahmaputra / Yarlung Tsangpo, where it forms a giant canyon traversing the Himalaya into India.

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Further to the west.

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Finally we descend (not much) for Lhasa.

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Lhasa lies surrounded by mountains at an altitude of 11713 ft / 3570 m. So, how can we land there? Here's the plan: heading to LXA VOR, then to the west and turning right approximately at the missed approach course line back to Lhasa VOR. Then 20 nm with a heading of 101° until turning onto the final approach course. Landing max. flaps 15.

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The descent and landing into Lhasa were especially rewarding, so much in fact that I made a video out of it.

 

You can find it here on Youtube.

 

It was a lot of work to edit. Actually I not only had to cut it and correct the progredient deviation of the soundtrack, but I also made it completely annotated to highlight some of the steps you should do when performing a high altitude landing. So leave a thumbs up if you like it.

 

Spoiler: The landing went well and the passengers were able to leave the plane. Thank you for flying with China Eastern! Next stop: Xi'an.

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19 hours ago, carlosqr said:

These are great shots Lars!

Another interesting flight

It is nice to experience new destinations

Lhasa is an awesome photo scenery add-on

Cheers

Carlos

 

Thank you Carlos for your comment. It is indeed an awesome scenery. 

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An outstanding flight over a fascinating terrain. The Himalaya really deserves a good sim, flying there it is just an adventure. Which you described well with your charts and the preparation for the unexpected...

I´ll go to the video now.

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14 minutes ago, Stillwater said:

An outstanding flight over a fascinating terrain. The Himalaya really deserves a good sim, flying there it is just an adventure. Which you described well with your charts and the preparation for the unexpected...

I´ll go to the video now.

Thank you for your comment, Gerold.

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Great video as well, Lars. Went through it as if it was just seconds...

I hate it when I have to ignore Pro-ATC/X, but I like to see you do the same. 

The mountains around Lhasa airport look quite real, is this pure FTX Global or some extra magic?

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6 minutes ago, Stillwater said:

Great video as well, Lars. Went through it as if it was just seconds...

I hate it when I have to ignore Pro-ATC/X, but I like to see you do the same. 

The mountains around Lhasa airport look quite real, is this pure FTX Global or some extra magic?

No it isn't pure FTX Global, and that's the reason why I didn't show the pictures, because I wanted to be a good guy at least once. :lol:;) You'll find it when you search for Lhasa on Simmarket, there's only one option for P3D.

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3 minutes ago, Captain Lars said:

No it isn't pure FTX Global, and that's the reason why I didn't show the pictures, because I wanted to be a good guy at least once. :lol:;) You'll find it when you search for Lhasa on Simmarket, there's only one option for P3D.

Understood. Not everything may come from the same provider. But I´d like to really have a good area scenery for the region you are currently flying in...

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1 minute ago, Stillwater said:

Understood. Not everything may come from the same provider. But I´d like to really have a good area scenery for the region you are currently flying in...

It's really quite nice when descending into / climbing out of the airport.

 

If there was only one single provider of addons for flight sim, this provider would sell a lot less copies of their products, and this provider knows that.

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