Ben Wilhelmi

Italy and Switzerland, aerial photography

 

Italian coast near Brindisi.

 

 

lake Como

 

 

 

somewhere here lies the border with Switzerland.

 

Northern Italy, aerial photography

 

last year during a ferry flight from Dubai to lake of Constance, Switzerland, here on the 3rd and last day, departed from Athens. I know, looking at a map shows that flying over Italy via Brindisi doesn’t make a straight line. In ages where companies try to save a penny, a liter of kerosene wherever they can…it’s not the pilots choice, not the company choices but a mix of Eurocontrol decisions (not a popular entity I gathered), some military airspaces, some mountains, some busy airspaces and a computer at work (that alone explains a lot of course).

Winter time it was but we got some good weather here and there.

My captain checking a map.

 

we had been following the Italian coast from Brindisi (again, see the map…) and then nearby Ancona, we went inland and never close to that cloud layer. I was so happy.

 

lake Como area, what a marvellous place it must be to visit! To live in even!

the Alps, soon we started our descent through bad weather.

somewhere below lies the border with Switzerland.

ferry flight…part XX

 

3 rd day of the ferry flight from Dubai to St Gallen, near Zurich.

Slowly leaving the Lombardy plain…

…and the Tuscany Apennine.

The Alps!

Part of the fabulous lake of Como. I saw once a documentary on television about this area. Not only that the area is just superb, a lake in the middle of mountains, beautiful and historic villas…there are some vintage seaplanes out there! I’d love to fly again seaplanes down there for sure!

Ferry flight, Dubai-Zurich, aerial shooting, part XIX

 

3rd day, the Athens-Zürich (Altenrhein) leg, northern Italy, flying at 16.000 ft... luckily the heater worked well in the De Havilland.

same picture, below slightly cropped.

 

 

The Alps on their way.

ferry flight Dubai-Zurich, aerials, part XVIII

flying overhead Italy, from Athens to Zurich area. The radio had got alive since we entered the Italian airspace. I think watching and listening to an Italian girl talking is always a sweet spectacle. Well even on the radio, it was fun to listen, the singing accent for one, the rapid fire, ‘ciao ciao’ or ‘buongiorno’ at nearly every sentence, Italian sentences instead of English, even the foreign pilots were drawn in the good mood and said ‘ciao ciao’ quite often.

One of the many villages perched on a hilltop. The houses were packed and not aligned.

some names I spotted on the map below us: Pescara, Rimini, Ancona, Trezzo, Bologna, Parma…

ferry flight, Dubai Zurich, aerials, part XVII

 

the 3rd flying leg, from Athens to Zurich, now overhead Italy, from Brindisi flying up the coast.

Unfortunately, we were flying alongside the coast but overhead the water. Being seated on the right side in the cockpit I was poorly positioned for shooting the landscape. Here across the left window.

So either I had to wait for the captain to grab some food in the back and I could then shoot properly through the left window, or wait till I was myself sometimes hanging around in the back. This mountain range would include Mt Pollino, Mt Papa, Mt Corvati… that’s also where the Apennine range starts in the south, then goes all the way north, more than 1000 km long.

 

Some clouds showed up again over the Adriatic sea towards the north and east hiding Croatia.

 

This is Vieste area. We took a new heading which brought us inland, finally.

 

Beautiful colors and patterns I must say.

ferry flight, Dubai-Zurich, aerial photos, part XVI

 

on th 3rd day, we left the Greek airspace for the Italian one.

this is the Peloponnese area, islands, mountains, these pictures here are shots alongside the Corinth and Patras gulfs.

The whole Ionian sea was hidden under a thick cloud layer. This is the last view from Greece. The Ionian islands and Corfu would stay out of sight, damn’.

Otrante Strait (Canal d’Otrante) between the Adriatic and the Ionian sea

 

and here is Brindisi.

from here, we could finally fly straight towards Switzerland.

ferry flight from Dubai to Zurich and back

 

so I’m back in Tanzania after 6 weeks. Here are some random pictures of the ferry trip, I’ll be more specific in the next posts.

 

over the Persian gulf.

 

circular crops over Saudi Arabia.

 

A desert similar to Death Valley, still in Saudi Arabia.

 

Mount Sinai, Egypt.

 

The aeroplane to be ferried, a De Havilland Twin Otter or DHC 6, here being refuelled in Sharm El Sheikh.

 

Gulf of Suez, Egypt mainland on the left, the Sinai peninsula on the right. The canal is located much more to the north, we didn’t overfly that landmark.

 

Over Greece. Snow!

 

fields in Italy.

 

The beautiful lake of Como at the foot of the Alps, Italy.

 

Crossing into Switzerland.

Bad weather before landing near Zurich.

Some icing at 16.000 ft.

 

Snow and artistic patterns over Serbia.