For several years now I’ve been eyeing the AU Scene’s YAYE Ayers Rock Airport. There’s something fascinating about flying to the middle of the Australian outback where there’s a relatively well equipped regional airport far away from just about anything else. Now that Just Flight’s Fokker 100 (and 70) are out, I’ve been doing a lot of Australian flying as this is where the type is still quite prominent with some operators and was prominent until very recently with others. Lots of good excuses to do a flight. So here’s how it went!

Adelaide to Uluru!

For this flight, I setup a Qantas Link Fokker 100 with a route that would take me from YPAD Adelaide Airport up to YAYE Ayers Rock Airport. After running through the usual start-up routine on the Fokker 100, I received permission to pushback and started up both engines.

Our departing runway was Runway 05 requiring a bit of taxi time to follow the taxiway across Runway 21/30 and over to the hold-short for 05.

With clearance to depart and the aircraft configure for takeoff, off we went into the skies above Adelaide.

South Australia is quite the rugged area and with the upgraded scenery from a recent world update, everything is looking very sharp indeed. It was already good before but this just seems to be better in every way.

We crossed the Yorke Peninsula and over Spencer Gulf before turning northwards.

Leaving the coast behind, we start flying over some truly spectacular scenery with plenty of deep reds defined by lots of hills and small mountains. There are also a lot of salt lakes in these areas with their pale reflections contrasting with the sands and soils.

I tend to fly over more temperate zones or in the Canadian or European north with its own rugged beauty but this really stands out as something else.

For most of this flight we were at or over FL300 – something that took the slow climbing Fokker 100 well over 10 minutes to accomplish. Its a fun airplane but not an especially high performer in that regard.

The scenery changed several times along the way with various shades of red and brown and plenty of unique moments to take in as we closed in on our destination.

Soon, Uluru (or Ayers Rock), emerged in the distance. This is a unique sandstone monolith that stands out from the other mountains and terrain features of the area. Its a UNESCO World Heritage site and a sacred area for indigenous peoples of the area. For flight simmers, it makes for a terrific landmark as you setup for an approach to land at YAYE Ayers Rock Airport.

I’m still working on my landings with the Fokker 100 which I find is a bit more tricky than the F28. Still, I was able to get a reasonably good path established landing with clear visuals for runway 13.

After landing, I brought the aircraft into a designated parking place and shut everything down. A reasonably successful sortie with increasingly less messing about in the cockpit as I slowly get to know the Fokker 100’s quirks. I’m enjoying the aircraft more and more and flying it in semi-real world or formerly real world operations in some different parts of the world is really quite fun. And the scenery can be jaw dropping like it was on this flight.

I highly recommend doing a mission like this!