Destination Panama. After more than 40 years in the cockpit, Captain Stefan Lane-Hülsenberg prepares his last rotation on an Airbus A340-300 named after the city of Herne. Time is running out at handling before departure. "The buses are already here, so hopefully we can begin soon. The ramp agent said that also that no animals of any kind are on board today. So hopefully this will all go relatively fast. For first officer Tobias Sendel, the flight to Panama is part of his co-pilot training on the A340. Before he was on the smaller A320, flying short and medium hauls for Lufthansa. "There are completely different challenges than on short haul trips where much is about ground handling and many short flights, while here you need to think strategically in advance, what I really like. Flight LH484 takes about 11 hours for the trip to Panama. When the captain is in the rest he will be represented by Senior First Officer Oliver Dittrich. "It is already clearly noticeable in radio traffic that the radio frequencies are increasing Increasingly, local traffic is now also on the move again and not only the international flights, but lot of domestic traffic between the islands. So the radio requires a little bit more attention." Highlight of this rotation is the last landing on the Frankfurt Airport as a captain. "Of course great conditions for a last approach. Few clouds, probably a bit too dusty for taking nice pictures but better than with thunder, ice or storm." The Lufthansa base at Frankfurt Airport. In the briefing centre, flight captain Stefan Lane-Hülsenberg, Senior First Officer Oliver Dietrich and First Officer Tobias Sendel are preparing for their flight to Panama today. "When I compare Barranquilla and Bogota what are the advantages and disadvantages?" "Barranquilla has one, while Bogota has two runways" "Barranquilla is much lower and less critical surroundings." "With good weather, this is surely the better place," "because there is no terrain." "The disadvantage of Bogota with all the mountains even with two runways is obvious." station ist vermutlich ist oder ein rot "En route weather looks good all the time but at 18 o'clock UTC there might be something here but we will have passed that already. And they are not so big" "We can avoid them" "Weather looks quite calm at the moment" "We will have a training flight today that means we took some extra time to look at the fuel planning. The flight will be quite uneventful, the weather en route is not spectacular. The weather on our destination is okay, probably a bit of rain is predicted. Alternate airport is okay as well" The ten-man cabin crew has already arrived in the adjoining room - under the direction of the pursers Ralf Marx and Anke Bartel. "Good Morning" - "Hello" "I will start here, hello, Stefan" "We will have two colleagues with us who have their first day on this plane." "A very warm welcome!" "That will be a nice experience, for one it is the last time for the others the first time." "And Ralf, you were on standby?" "Yes, I voluntarily agreed to jump in. Normally I would have had on-call duty but instead I have to do short haul for five days I prefer to go on long haul with you." "Okay so I will say something now and I will keep it briefly, because we are a bit we are a bit late now. First, welcome to our flight to Panama. Nothing extraordinary regarding the weather. Over there very nice and warm anyway. One or the other rain shower as usual for this season. En route the weather is relatively good. One request to you - please go with your gut's feeling regarding safety. It is very important for us that everbody lands here safely again. So if someone feels he or she likes to sit down and the signs are not on already then please sit down and fasten the belts. Your safety is of uttermost importance, because only when you are ok, you can be there for others. And we do it all with a good mood. First name bases please. Tobias, Oliver, Stefan. Tobias is in training, so we will talk a bit more. But you are always warmly welcome and please come in if you want. Please communicate openly and clearly. If you think, we do not need to know it, think twice, probably it's good to let us know nevertheless. We will do the same. So enjoy your flight, we will meet us at the security." With the rotation starting today, the A340 crew will be on the move for three days. The „crane airline“ departs five times a week from it's home base to Panama City, capital of the Central American country. "The plane is on position Foxtrott 212 which is an outside position at the Airport Franfurt. Now we want to get there first, taking the normal roads to the park position, then preparing the plane to finally welcome our passengers to Panama. It will take us approx. 11 hours flight time We are all very excited, because our captain has his final flight today." "We will try to fly a bit faster to make up the time and reach the destination almost punctually. This depends of course as well if we get out here as planned. But there is a little risk, because of the outside position. The busses with passengers have to get there first and that can take longer than expected. But we also hope because the plane is not completely booked that we get away punctually and thus have a chance to get there within a limit of say 5 or 10 minutes." "I had one rotation on the A340 already This will be my second rotation." Today, the Airbus A340-300, designation "Golf-Lima", is in service. The A340 was Airbus' first four-engine wide-body jet and has been in Lufthansa's scheduled service since the early 1990s. While co-pilots and flight attendants on board the "Herne" make the final preparations before boarding the passengers, flight captain Stefan Lane-Hülsenberg takes over the obligatory outside check. He runs once clockwise around the plane and checks if anything is okay. "The dispatch looks okay there is a fuel truck over there so we can check how much we got." "Still missing about 5 tons, that means that in about 5 minutes refuelling will be finished. Here, I check tires, brakes, and hydaulic pipes for leakages. Here for example that the connectors are there and that everything is okay. Here at the back you can see the brake indicators, showing how much of it is left. I check that it looks like it should. Very important is to check the gear lock. They get pushed in and there would be a red flag when they are still locked. But no red flag, so everything is okay. Everything looks fine. The plane is in a good condition. Fueling is done soon. The first bus has already arrived, so we will start with that soon too. The ramp agent also said there are no animals on board today. So it will go pretty fast hopefully. And now we start. Another good half an hour, then Stefan Lane-Hülsenberg will take off for the last time in Frankfurt. I am excited about it. But I am also excited about the training flight. But actually it is incredibly much of normality and routine. I can't really say, that I feel nervously or even nostalgically. This is the Delta Alpha India Golf Lima and carries the name "Herne". It's an older A340, you can see it clearly on how it is equipped. If you were looking for a satellite navigational system, you wouldn't find it. But eventually it will be refitted. Technically the plane is in a good condition. We have also checked the fuel distribution. We got almost 15 tons in the center tank. Looks all like it should look like. When we throw a look at the tires here you can read the pressures and it's all fine, like it should be. Temperatures are cool at the beginning of course. The plane is in the best condition. We had an estimated take off time at 10:47, almost an hour to go from now on, but the it advances slowy towards us now, so our new slot will be at 10:35. That means we are allowed to start earliest at about 10:30. So when we start the motors at about 10:20 we should be fine. Probably the slot advances further which would be good for us because at the moment with this slot we will be 20 or 25 minutes late. But that is because of the air traffic control, the situation in the airspace and the Air traffic control situation Langen. Those are times in Zulu, that means 10:35 is 12:25 local time." "We got 241 passengers and 1 infant. Flightplan no. 7 and loadsheet 1 and a NOTOC 1 as well." "Ok, we got everything. Thanks a lot!" "All the best and enjoy your free time! Do you know what you will do with it ?" "Oh I know what to do, but I am not saying anything. But I have lots of good ideas" "I still have a few years to go!" "They're not all about leisure." "I also want to do something else." "Maybe we'll see you here again?" That wouldn't be entirely out of the question! "I'll say something about our general cooperation. We do in a pleasant and quiet atmosphere when someone notices something, he says it out loud and clearly. We try to keep standard procedures whenever possible. If we deviate from something we must first of all have good reasons for it. More important is that we have to tell the others so everyone knows why we do things differently. And then we also know how to deal with it. About tires and brakes problems - If we suspect anything, we might take it up to the air. If when we have four engines running, we can consider whether the landing gear stays down, so we won't damage something when retracting. With three engines left this won't work. Do we have an agreement? einfahren nichts weiteres kaputt machen Well then, let me quickly say: Before Start Checklist please. Should be 93, we got 92.9. I'll make an announcement right now! Thank you very much, I will quickly make an announcement for the guests. Oh, great. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, your captain speaking. On behalf of the entire Lufthansa crew, I would like to welcome you to the Star Alliance flight to Panama. There has been a delay, which is also due to the fact that the crew came aboard a little later. Now we closed all the doors, the luggage is loaded, we will be leaving this position shortly but we also have a assigned start time which is in a quarter of an hour. Which means we wouldn't have gotten out any earlier anyway. May I wish you all a very pleasant stay and a pleasant flight. Before landing in Panama, First Officer Tobias Sendel will contact you again with further information about the weather in Panama." Twelve thirty-two. A good twenty minutes late, the "Herne" leaves its parking position and rolls to runway one / eight of Frankfurt Airport - commonly known as Runway West. The captain take over taxiing - First Officer Tobias Sendel takes off. musik From the smaller Airbus A320 for short- and medium-haul flights to the long-haul Airbus A340: For Tobias Sendel the new and larger aircraft type is a change.
