I was looking for something new: a challenge, and a way to fly somewhere new and different - or, even better, lots of new and different places.
Round the world has always had an appeal. How could it not? But I wondered: rather than the usual Canada-Greenland-Iceland passages, is there a different way to go about this? Now, I’ve nothing against Greenland and there’s some great scenery out there too. But why not try something completely different, I thought.
So here it is. I’m going to try and fly around the world in alphabetical order. In a Justflight Piper Turbo Arrow, naturally. Starting from Afghanistan and ending up in Zimbabwe, I’m going to fly to each country on the Wikipedia list of sovereign states. Now I’m sure some of these will be contentious, but I’ll try to leave the politics out of this for now at least…
To inject a little extra realism, I’m flying this on FSEconomy, too, trying to pick up missions where possible (this round the world jaunt won’t pay for itself, you know!). I’ll also try and fly live weather as much as possible (I know I’m going to regret those headwinds already).
Before getting properly started, I felt it would be best to buy myself a new Arrow. I picked it up at Courcelles Aerodrome in France. New registration to suit the trip: G-ABCDE (I hope you won’t mind the extra letter there…)
My route to Afghanistan takes me across Europe, through Turkey and then Iran, to Herat in western Afghanistan. After that, it’s back West, to Albania, then Algeria, and so on.
I’ll try to keep you updated on progress here. And I’d love it if you’d suggest places I should fly over or stop off at enroute.