Given the weather forecast for today, we brought the flight to Tirana forward by a couple of hours so leaving at 1:10 pm local time having arrived at the airport just after 12 noon. Before that, we had a further walk round Trogir old town and visited the small but interesting cathedral. The weather was dry and warm but with rather ominous looking cloud and sure enough, just after we started to taxi, so did the rain start.
We received a message on the trip WhatsApp that the rest of the team in Salzburg also had misgivings about the weather and planned to route initially to Belgrade and would then review further progress.
After departure, we climbed to our cruising altitude of 11,000 ft which put us in cloud where we remained for the entire flight until a three mile final. For most of the time it rained, at times heavily, and there was considerable activity on the storm scope generally beyond 25 miles. More tiresome was that we hit a 50Kt + headwind which made progress very slow and increasingly bumpy as we moved south.
The fair forecast for Tirana went downhill with thunderstorms arriving earlier than predicted with a light wind down the runway being replaced by a strong gusty crosswind. We were vectored to hold north of the airfield while the proceeding aircraft made an approach and then broke it off because of wind shear and diverted. Another holding CAT aircraft was considering his position so we elected to make an approach although by now the thunderstorm with heavy rain was almost overhead the airfield. All went well however with an ILS approach and the wind become more favourable for landing with the runway lights seen at 3 miles.
A ‘follow me’ car then lead us to a remote part of the airfield for parking and after a while, the handler appeared in his car so (still in heavy rain) we jumped out of Juliet B, got the luggage out and into the car and were taken to the airfield terminal. Then followed a long taxi ride into Tirana with very heavy traffic and finally to our hotel. En route, we heard that the rest of our group had decided to stay overnight in Belgrade and make their way here tomorrow in better weather.
So ends three days of quite testing flying in parts. Will we ever get any summer weather?
Split to Tirana 200 nm in 2 hr 30 min