Mission Accomplished

we made it back to sacramento fine. mission accomplished. woke up this morning to rain in sacramento. a far cry from the maui we experienced due to el nino. it was like summer there because el nino has sent storms to California instead.

the flight home was smoother in our cadillac of the skies airbus a330. it was a much faster trip too.

sacramento to maui we flew into headwinds that slowed us all down. returning we had a 80mph tailwind so the flight time was around 4 hours. much better.

cheryl had a much better flight time returning including watching the original jurrasic park that filmed in hawaii. fitting and funny

the landings was a bit rough. in kahului we flew through the valley over the soon to be gone sugar cane fields and got bounced around but not as bad as landing in las vegas with the thermals. with the big plane for their average smaller airport runway the pilot had to hit the brakes hard. real hard! think we experienced what it is like being a crash test dummy in deceleration.

in oakland we crabbed when we landed. as the well seasoned pilot just about touched down there must have been a big wind gust. one wing lifted a bit, our left wheels hit the runway and as they grabbed the plane righted itself by pulling left.

having flown a lot as a child and tried being a pilot myself i knew this was a white knuckle moment hoping our wing didnt strike the runway as the pilot fought the plane at the last minute of touchdown. most passengers didnt even realize what happened. just happy to be down.

i've experienced hard landings, the hard breaking at kahului, but this landing at oakland was my most unplesdent landing experience. all seemed fine till that last few seconds of touchdown where the wing dipped, we landed and crabbed.