Flight Log: Jundiai SBJD/Rio d. J. SBRJ -- Foz do Iguacu SBFI 26./27./28.01.2018

26 January 2018, Rio de Janeiro — Iguazu:

On 26 January, we took leave of our handling agents in Rio. There was practically no bureaucracy, but a few surprises.

The first one came in the guise of the pump attendant who told us that he’d overcharged by about 1,500 reais and gave us these back in 100 reais notes.

The second surprise came slightly later because the handling agent had undercharged us by about 500 reais. All in all we got about 1,000 rias back. We were fairly amazed.

The third surprise was our farewell from Rio with a plane covered in musical paintings that we saw out of the window.

As usual, our departure from Santos Dumont went without a hitch. After about three quarters of an hour, we were on our way to the tri-border region of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina to Iguazu. Kurt thought he could spot Santa Catarina on the cross-country flight. Santa Catarina is a place where Germans live above all. It was also founded by Germans and has earned a reputation as Brazil’s granary. Later on, I did see a cornfield as well.

Shortly before we reached Iguazu, we had been in regular contact with the tower controller who actually allowed us to fly around the waterfalls, but at 4,000 feet, or 1,200 metres. We weren’t permitted to descend any further. That was quite difficult because the bottom of the clouds was at exactly this altitude of 4,000 feet and we were sometimes in them and sometimes not. And it was at those precise moments that Kurt wanted to quickly take a photo. But he did manage to take some.

We made a visual approach to Iguazu. A low-flying Boeing at about 1,000 feet was in front of us and we were making a downward approach at 3,000 feet. Once the Boeing had landed, we were able to fly to the runway and landed safely there too.

A comment on the way the pilots worked. We have two iPads on board to make notes on. We have a Garmin 1000 on which we can see all our flight plans, approach and take-off charts. So the cockpit is a paperless one. But there are pilots who can’t change the way they are from one day to the next, or just simply like to stick to the way they’ve always done things.

One example is that we have two flight logs from Kurt and me to show that neither of us can quite bid farewell to the traditional way of making notes. But despite that, we wouldn’t be without the iPads and the Garmin 1000.