Room with a view

Look out below!!!

This is an AC Jazz RJ passing 1000 feet above us as we all line up to land into Toronto. Sometimes the Air Traffic Controllers will tell us that there is an aircraft descending to 1000 feet above and will be passing overhead. At least we know it's coming then. Sometimes it comes as a bit of a surprise for us. The planes do appear quite close but what is even more disturbing is that they are the same distance away when we are all in cloud and can't see each other.

To keep things new and interesting I often request some flying out of Toronto. Every other month I try to get out of Montreal and head to the rat race of Toronto's Pearson Airport.
This pairing took me to Sault St. Marie, home of the Algoma Steel company. Did you know that there is a Sault St. Marie in Canada and a Sault St. Marie in the USA? They are actually beside each other only separated by a river. A nice day in the "SOO" as they call it provided this nice picture of the airport as we maneuvered to land.

We saw a large tanker in the shipping channel and thought we should go in for a closer look before landing. We often take the chance for a bit of sightseeing when the situation permits.



Final approach for Runway 12. This is where we have to work the hardest. Oooops did I use the word work and hard in the same sentence describing my job? Sorry. One pilot is concentrating ever so hard on getting the plane on the runway in on piece and the other guy................is still sightseeing, after putting the gear down, flaps down and flicking a few switches of course. I'd take another sip of my Double Double but it's all gone so water it is. Bing.......Bong.........could I get a glass of ice please? Oh Ya landing.........

One of our Canadain Snowbirds stopped in Sault St. Marie for some fuel.



After Sault St. Marie we headed back to Toronto. I am not sure why I always take pictures of the downtown but it I like the view from above I guess.

I have been wanting to get the opportunity to take this photo for some time. It seems we seldom get to land on this runway. This happens to be the site of the Air France crash a few years ago. For those of you that aren't familiar, about 2 years ago an Air France Airbus A340 landed in a thunderstorm and for many reasons landed over halfway down the runway and was unable to stop before going off the end and into a gully, bursting into flames.
This approach will overfly the gully where the A340 came to rest. Anyways, the reason for the picture is to capture the size of the 401 freeway and the volume of traffic at 7:30 in the morning. I tried to count the lanes and got somewhere between 18 and 20 lanes of traffic. Click to enlarge this picture for a better view.



While all the passengers sit uncomfortably in their seats waiting for their plane to take off we sit looking up the back end of the plane in front of us. Right in front of us is a Westjet 737. This is our definition of sitting in traffic during the morning rush. I guess I should take another sip of my Double Double. Toronto's Tim Horton's makes the worst DD's around! This is the last one of the day I promise.

This aircraft or should I say airline is relatively new to Toronto. Etihad Airway's is based out of Abu Dhabi. They use an Airbus A340-500 for the 12+ hour jaunt across the Atlantic.