Daily Pampering: Private sails in St. Thomas

by Melanie Nayer on

Now that you’re on the gorgeous island of St. Thomas, why not take some time to explore the island’s beautiful surroundings?

Hop aboard The Ritz-Carlton, St. Thomas‘s private catamaran, the Lady Lynsey, and enjoy a day of private sailing through the British Virgin Islands.

The Lady Lynsey, the resort’s 53-foot luxury catamaran, offers private charters and sailing excursions through the Caribbean waters for the ultimate luxury island-hopping experience. Starting at $2,250, you’ll be picked up from the resort’s beach for half- and full-day private getaways, where you snorkel, watch the sunset, enjoy dinner and drinks or just relax with an open bar on your private boat.

Should you want to invite others along, the catamaran can accommodate a private party for up to 49 guests. My advice? Take your $2,250 and treat yourself to a little alone time at sea.

Want more? Get your daily dose of pampering right here.

Cockpit Chronicles: Groundhog day – The St. Thomas turn (with video)

by Kent Wien on

One of the benefits of working as an airline crewmember, whether it be as a pilot or flight attendant, is the chance to get to know a city in a manner that’s second only to living there. But when we’re given the option to fly a month of ‘turns’ – those one day trips with flight times occasionally exceeding eight hours, many of our Boston international pilots forgo the London or Aruba layover for a line with 9 or 10 turns in it.

It’s tough to pass up a schedule that allows you to be home every night and have a good deal of time off as well.

As a result of the popularity of these turns, they’re not always available to choose when you’re as junior on the seniority list as I am. But my seniority must have improved since the beginning of the year, since I’m able fly FO (First Officer, as opposed to FB, the relief pilot) lines to St. Thomas.

Some might consider it torturous to see a glimpse of warm weather during a walkaround inspection lasting less than ten minutes, only to come straight back to the northeast and land while it’s snowing.
But for the entire month of February, I’ve been doing just that – flying trips to and from St. Thomas, and occasionally trading for a different day or different destination, such as San Juan. I’ve kept an eye open for an opportunity to ‘chronicle’ the trip, but the flights have been rather uneventful and amazingly consistent.

So consistent in fact, that I feel like I’m experiencing a pilot’s version of the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day.

Wake up at 5, depart at 9. Answer a Plane Answers question during the 1 hour crew rest break. Fly a visual approach to runway 10 in St. Thomas, park at gate 3.

I’ll debate whether the view is interesting enough to go outside and snap a picture, and then decide I have plenty of St. Thomas ramp pictures already so I check my e-mail on the phone before doing the interior preflight. The FB comes back in from inspecting the outside, followed by the captain with the paperwork he collected from operations in the terminal and we’re again departing to Boston 5 minutes before our scheduled time.

The flight home might include sleeping on my break, and then returning to the cockpit just in time to watch the sun set before getting ready for the visual approach or ILS to runway 27 back in Boston.

Taxiing in, we maneuver around the same outbound US Airways flight, before finally parking at gate B31.

The FB races out of the cockpit like he’s late for a date, which is entirely expected of that position since there’s nothing left for him to do, except maybe to take the trash bag out of the cockpit as he leaves.

But now, after 10 of these trips in a row, I’ve learned to enjoy the repetitiveness of the flying. It’s refreshing to be familiar with each VHF frequency you’ll dial in as the airplane progresses through the various ATC boundaries. I don’t even mind the same turkey wrap or chicken caesar salad meal option we get on each leg.

And while the captain and relief pilot are occasionally different people, airlines insist on standardized callouts and actions, so even that doesn’t offer much variety.

Last night, however, we had a little experience that finally made the trip one that will stick in my memory for a long time. As we were descending to 24,000 feet (flight level 240 in pilot speak) we leveled off just above a cloud layer.

I call this cloud skimming, and anytime we’re above 10,000 feet, I like to pull out my camera to capture the sensation of speed that 300 knots provides when you’re just a few hundred feet above a layer of clouds.

But today, of all days, I chose to leave my new, amazingly wonderful, mind-blowing Canon 5D Mark II digital SLR slash HD video camera at home. I figured I knew everything that would happen today, right down to the approach and gate we’d be using, and since I had taken enough shots of anything even remotely interesting during the previous flights, today seemed like the day to shed the extra three pounds.

Never again! I was forced to pull out my $210 Flip Mino HD video camera, which I love for it’s simplicity and incredible portability, but I know the 5D’s HD mode would have been even more beautiful.

For those learning to fly, a quick note. After you get your private license, you might be thinking about adding an instrument rating to your ticket. You’re probably weighing the costs and benefits of such an investment. Let me tell you that, in addition to improving your flying skills and your options during long cross country flights, you’ll also be able to experience scenes such as the following that just might make all the studying and checkrides worth it.

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on some of Kent’s trips as an international co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 based in Boston. Have any questions for Kent? Check out Plane Answers.

Cockpit Chronicles: A three-legged turn

by Kent Wien on

I raced to the phone to check the caller ID. It was crew scheduling. Of course I had to answer. As much as I hoped I wouldn’t be called for an Easter trip, I knew it was likely to happen–It’s part of the job when you’re on reserve.

Camille had two trips to offer me, one of which I had to take. The first was a San Francisco two-day trip. It had an early departure from Boston, arriving at SFO before noon. Then after 10 hours of rest during the daytime, the flight would leave at around 10 p.m. and arrive back in Boston at 6 a.m. I felt like a vegetarian listening to the waitress read off the prime rib specials.

“No thanks!” I interrupted. As much as I like San Francisco, I wasn’t interested in a short layover that required you to sleep during the day before flying an all-nighter back home. Not to mention that the layover hotel was at the airport.

The other trip was the usual Caribbean turn, this time to St. Thomas. But instead of simply one leg down and one leg back, they had us going from St. Thomas to San Juan, Puerto Rico before heading home. Apparently, due to some very strong winds and high seas, a fuel tanker couldn’t dock at a number of Caribbean Islands to supply them with fuel. So we would need to continue on to San Juan to make a quick fuel stop.

The 757 can hold 74,500 pounds of fuel — enough to make it there and back — but we wouldn’t have been able to take all the passengers with us if we filled up with round-trip fuel. So the San Juan fuel stop was arranged for all the flights from Boston and New York to the islands that weekend.

I was the relief pilot alongside Captain Mike and FO (first officer or co-pilot) Mark. I was happy to fly with another set of people I enjoyed. A few of the flight attendants were some of my favorites as well–Roz and Rita specifically.
Before going to work, I managed to spend a half hour taking pictures of my two girls (ages 6 and 2) while they were busy finding Easter eggs all over the house. I think they discovered about thirty plastic eggs before I had to head out the door for my quick trip to the sun and back. I was thrilled to at least get to do a little egg hunting with them, though.

After meeting up in operations, I went off to do the exterior preflight inspection–looking over the general condition of the airplane, checking the tire pressures and brake wear indicators and a few other essential items. FO Mark set up the inside by programming the FMS and testing the fire warning horns. Captain Mike printed out the flight plan and picked up some coffee for everyone. He’s that kind of guy.

Since I was just along for the ride when we took off from Boston, I managed to take a few nice shots of the city.

We each had a one-hour break going down to St. Thomas. I managed to rest a bit, but like most people, I’m never really able to completely sleep in the back of an airplane.

The arrival into St. Thomas went smoothly, as did the entire flight. After landing, I sat in the cockpit and marveled at all the different airlines that fly to St. Thomas. So I snapped a few pictures of Delta’s freshly painted 757 and a USAirways 767. A Gulfstream II taxied in and pulled up to the terminal. There were so many corporate jets all over the airport that I didn’t bother taking a picture of the G-II.

A United pilot asked the tower, “who’s the big-wig in the Gulfstream?”

A kind of unusual question, I thought. He must be able to see something from his end of the terminal as they were getting off.

“Can’t tell you.” Said the controller.

Then another pilot jumped in and said, “Obama.”

I figured it was just a joke, maybe a response to the fact that everywhere you turn lately, you’re seeing the presidential candidates stumping for votes. But I found out today that it was, in fact, Barack Obama in the Gulfstream. A strategic vacation during this lull we’re in for a few weeks before the primaries pick up again, I would think. I wouldn’t be surprised if he swings into Puerto Rico to campaign a bit on the way home.

Of course the only airplane I didn’t get a picture of was that Gulfstream.

Note the new versus old Delta color schemes:


Since we had three flights that day, I kindly persuaded Captain Mike to give me the leg to San Juan.

Which led to this:

Actually it was Mike’s idea that I fly to San Juan. He didn’t have to twist my arm for me to say yes, and luckily I didn’t really have to grab him by his tie. A short hop that was flight planned for 27 minutes, where you hardly have to turn on the autopilot is by far the most fun you can have in an airliner.

The flight to San Juan ended up taking 25 minutes and we never climbed higher than 10,000 feet. If it weren’t so cloudy, we would’ve had an amazing view of Puerto Rico.

Because of the added fuel stop, we were running almost an hour late. We had a few passengers that were trying to connect to the London flight out of Boston, so we did our best to call the company and plead for them to hold the flight. The evening London flight has an arrival slot time that needs to be met, so they were very reluctant to hold the flight. We managed to land ten minutes before the London flight left, and I assume the passengers made it to the London flight three gates away. I sure hope so. The flight attendants let them know that they might not arrive in London with their bags because of the tight connection. They were still willing to give it a try.

I’ll be on reserve for April. The chances are slim that they’ll use me again before my days off start this weekend. So until next month…

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on each of Kent’s trips as a co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 out of Boston.

Holistic Holiday Cruise

by Adrienne Wilson on

Don’t you hate it when you return from vacation to find your luggage isn’t the only thing you’re packing? Wouldn’t it be great to go on a cruise, eat all you wish and come back as slim, fit and healthy as ever? Yeah, I think we all long deeply for that one and I’m not promising anything by sending you to this link, but it’s worth scoping out. A Taste of Health & Vegetarian Times is hosting a seven day trip for the mind, body and spirit. Holistic Holiday at Sea IV – Voyage to Well-Being takes to the seas March 4-March 11, 2007.

What’s cool about the cruise? Experts in holistic living and natural health will be on board shedding their light on any interested takers during lectures and workshops. Continuing education credits (CEU’s) will also be available. The liner itself is said to be a world premier Italian luxury and will stop at ports in the Dominica Republic, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, Grand Turk and the U.S. Virgin Islands to name only a healthy handful.

So you probably won’t loose any weight, but you’ll have a good time.