Onward! CYHZ to CYYT

Our second leg on this long journey was a shorter 476nm hop from Halifax (CYHZ) to St. John's International (CYYT). We departed a snowy Halifax at 22:30Z with an approximate flight time of just over an hour, this was going to be a fairly quick, smooth flight. Or so I thought!

We left Halifax via runway 14 with 48 souls on board and had planned to fly up to FL290. St. John's International is the eastern most province of Canada: Newfoundland and Labrador. Fun fact, St. John's Airport was built during WW2 at which time Newfoundland and Labrador was not yet a Canadian province, it started off as a military aerodrome and was designed to help protect the East Coast from the potential threat of German raids.

As we approached CYYT the winds started to pick up, a quick check on the weather report provided some bad news, winds were high, averaging 30 knots gusting up to 75 knots and we had overcast cloud cover at 2000 feet. Welcome to the Eastern-most coast!

With nerves strung high, the HUD came into play as we shot the ILS on Runway 29 via ONDAP. Thankfully the plane managed to capture the localizer and glideslope and despite the winds we landed safely and respectably considering the conditions.

The general idea for the next few legs, was to hop across to Greenland, then Iceland and make our way down through the United Kingdom. To get to Greenland however, I felt I needed to get a little closer than St. John's due in part to the range/performance of the CRJ and actual flight time. So our next planned hop was from St. John's to Goose Bay (CYYR).

CYYT to CYYR - utilizing the excellent Skyvector

More on that flight, on the next blog!