Flying activities (by Ernst Frei)
On October 4, we concluded a very challenging flying season. It was a season of ups and downs, but with a mostly happy ending.
For the first time in almost two years there were technical problems to tackle; a more detailed report will follow from our technical director, Arnold Freund.
The seasons' biggest mishap occurred at Buochs, where we scraped our Connie's right wingtip on a hangar tent which was positioned in unusually close proximity to the taxiway. However we were fortunate to have recruited the services of a true dream team who were able to construct a new part for the aircraft within only seven days. You will find more details in the maintenance section of this newsletter.
The weather Gods were not on our side this past season. With an almost eery consistency we had clear skies and beautiful weather throughout the week, which gave way to rain and overcast skies for the flying weekends. It was not only a disappointment to our fans but also very nervewrecking for myself; as the Operations Director, I was in charge of flight cancellations, and it was a very difficult task to watch throughout the week as the weather was worsening, and having to cancel yet another flight. Knowing that not only the 35 members who had booked a ticket would be disappointed, but that there were usually thousands of fans affected, as they waited in vain for their Connie to appear at air shows. Making the go or no go decision has always been my most difficult task.
Various flights needed to be cancelled or postponed, several of which needed to be moved to our 2010 flying schedule, such as for example the flight to Tannheim (Memmingen) as well as our second flight to Samedan along with the 15 lakes flight from Bern to Lahr. As much as we tried everytime to conduct each and every planned flight, sometimes we had to realize that we were powerless against the sheer strength of bad weather systems.
However, there were also countless unforgettable highlights, such as our visit to the „Klassikwelt“ at Friedrichshafen, the Connie's performance at the Air Show at Le Bourget (The Connie was quoted to be the „Star of the Show“ by Flight International Magazine). The Air Shows at Samedan and Mollis, as well as our formation flight with the Patrouille Suisse in celebration of the „Swiss Museum of Transport“ 50 year anniversary in Lucerne along with our visit to Airbus in Hamburg and our traditional Bern weekend were also a great success.
The Connie had to work very hard during flight training which was conducted by our Instructor Francisco Agullo for our friends at Lufthansa who are preparing for the transatlantic crossing of their Starliner aircraft in 2011. Our maintenance team was once again challenged when our oldest engine (engine number 1) failed shortly after beginning of flight training, and needed to be replaced at Epinal. You will find more information in Arnold Freund's report. As the Operations Director of the SCFA I would like to applaud the performance of our maintenance team; they were able to replace the engine and get our Connie back in the air within only five days (engine failure occurred on Monday night, test flight was conducted on Saturday night). Hats off to everybody for their tremendous efforts!
After tackling this hurdle we were able to log a total of more than 30 hours of Lufthansa training lessons. As a result, our financial situation now looks promising and we are very excited for the future flying seasons. Unfortunately we suffered another engine failure at the very end of training, it happened during the very last checkride conducted for Lufthansa; this time engine number 2 was affected. This engine had been installed in 1980. Despite this unfortunate occurrence the Connie landed safely at Lahr, the checkride was passed, and the Lufthansa training was therefore successfully completed. Our technical team, however, will have their hands full with many additional tasks during the upcoming winter season.
Our Connie has continued to show us what a privilege it is to fly her. Not even the best possible care given by our maintenance team can guarantee a flawless operation of this old, graceful queen of the skies.
Maintenance Report (by Arnold Freund)
At the beginning of October our Connie had its last flight, a repositioning flight to Lahr. This flight concluded a very intensive flying season for our maintenance team.
After a relatively smooth start of the season we had to respond to a rather inconvenient mishap at Buochs. During taxi from the ramp to the runway the aircraft's right wingtip brushed a tent which caused significant damage and had to be repaired on site. The wing tip frame along with the light fixtures needed to be replaced entirely. Thanks to the tireless efforts of two young licensed aircraft mechanics, Dominik Kaelin and Michael Simmen from Einsiedeln supported by our flightengineer on training Rolf Harlacher, this task could be completed within only 5 days. They worked from sunrise to sunset- we are eternally greatful for their tremendous efforts!
From a maintenance perspective, our „on time performance“ has not been as successful as in the past two years. Two flights had to be cancelled along with several flights which had to be annulled as a result of cancelling the first two. This was a hard hit, especially since the weather was not cooperating, which led to an even shorter flying season.
The first unplanned maintenance delay was caused at Lahr where we had to exchange a cylinder each as well as the „Power Recovery Turbine“ in engines number 1 and 3.
After this procedure we were able to resume the second part of the flying season; however it shortly needed to be interrupted once more for yet another cylinder replacement on engine number 1. Thanks to the support of Air Service Basel we received a hangar and infrastructure to fix this problem quickly and have the aircraft back in the sky in time for the next flight.
The „Gärn ab Bern“ weekend concluded the 2009 flying season for our SCFA members.
This year there was yet another much more intensive task on the schedule for our aircraft, however without any passengers on board. At the end of September/ beginning of October we began training Lufthansa crews (4 pilots along with 2 flight engineers). This marked the beginning of a very work intensive time for our maintenance team, quite possibly the highest instensity we have experienced with the SCFA in five years.
Due to a lack of infrastructure, most of our materials as well as ground machinery needed to be transported to Epinal in order to allow Lufthansa to maximize their flight training hours which were scheduled to last for 2 weeks.
Training with the Lufthansa crews provided another technical setback for us; after only 4 hours of intensive training we needed to shut down engine number 1 due to a lack of performance. This called for an engine change. We called all available volunteers and were to make the almost impossible task of changing an engine in this rural area possible. Equipped with only a long runway and a very small hangar, Epinal is a less than ideal place for such an endeavour. However thanks to our great team we managed to replace engine number 1 within only 5 days.
We were relieved to hear the Pilot In Command's report that everything, especially engine number 1 was running smoothly.
All in all the Lufthansa crews flew over 30 hours and 100 landings in our Connie; we were very pleased to see the second part of the training unwind without any further problems- until the very last flight. On our way to Lahr we needed to do yet another precautionary shutdown; this time it was engine number 2, which had been installed on our aircraft in 1980 and had never before been replaced.
This past flying season is now part of history for our maintenance team. We will always remember it well, as there were many positive aspects and memories, not just the mishaps and engine failures.
I would like to take this opportunity to extend my upmost gratitude to all of our volunteers for contributing to an exceptional project's success over the past few months.
Media Presence (by Ernst Frei)
People have become increasingly aware of the Connie's presence in our country. When we first founded the SCFA we used to beg the press for media attention. This past summer the media came and asked us to star in their shows and reports. Thanks to Tele Züri's 30 minute show which aired directly from the aircraft, more than 100 new members have joined the SCFA in a few weeks. Several news papers and magazines asked to write articles about (i.e. Tages Anzeiger, Schweizer Familie, Sonntagsblick, Solothurner Zeitung and many more). In addition, aviation magazines such as Skynews continue to do a great job covering our aircraft and the SCFA . The German TV channel ZDF is working on a hour show about flying, „then and now“, and will feature the Breitling Super Constellation as their main historic aircraft. We will broadcast the air date of the show on via our website's newsticker as soon as possible. Furthermore our Connie will be a topic in the famous late night talk show “Äschbacher” on Swiss television SF1 on November 12th !
Our second aircraft has arrived! (by Hansjörg Bürgi)
This past spring, another oldtime airliner has joined us. Francisco Agullo and his team managed to ferry a 69 year old DC-3A from Florida to Switzerland and have it registered here. Breitling will use this aircraft as a source of advertisement; the DC-3A will be operated by the Super Constellation Flyers Association.
The ferry flight took 45 hours and began on May 3rd in Opa Locka, near Miami, Florida. In a total of 17 legs, the aircraft flew to the Canton of Valais in Switzerland via Québec, Greenland, Iceland, Scotland, and Denmark. The DC-3A's Swiss registration is HB-IRJ. The Connie welcomed our new aircraft over lake Geneva and escorted it to the ground. Following was a hearty welcome home party bid to the 15 passengers, as well as our crew members, Francisco Agullo, Paul Zitzer, and Elisabeth Zitzer. The SCFA volunteers along with the Aéroport de Sion were responsible for the organization of the „Welcome Home“-Party which included 13 other Oldtimer aircraft as well as approximately 2000 visitors and fans.
Throughout the summer months HB-IRJ was mostly based at Geneva; its flights included a visit to the Red Bull Air Races at Budapest, Porto, and Barcelona. The DC-3 also flew for SCFA members, for example departing from Berne on September 19. Although the DC-3 offers seating capacity for 30 passengers, Francisco Agullo has decided to only take 15-20 passengers along on each flight. „We want everyone to have the opportunity to have a window seat“, Agullo explains. In addition, all passengers will receive VIP treatment onboard which includes a glass of Champagne. During the winter months, HB-IRJ will be hangared alongside Hugo Mathys' DC-3, HB-ISC at St.Stephan.
Selling our first Connie CF (by Ernst Frei)
After lengthy negotiations as well as meetings with our board we have decided to sell our Avra Valley based CF to our friends of the HARS (Historical Aircraft Restauration Society) who had inquired about buying the aircraft from our association. This way we were able to prevent our first dream aircraft from rotting and rusting away in the desert or even having it crushed. Some of CF's parts will now be re-used and installed in aircraft which will continue to fly, which makes us very proud! We are looking for a way to highlight and enhance a part on our Connie which was taken from CF, in order to have a constant reminder of all the beautiful memories of CF. We will never forget our first Super Connie.
Airstairs and Tractor as a gift! (by Ernst Frei)
On our very first member flight this season we welcomed, among other members, Mr. Bernhard Scholz of Fraport, Frankfurt's Handling-Company. Upon exiting the aircraft at Basel, he seemed surprised at the pityful sight of the mechanics airstairs over which we deplaned. Shortly thereafter he decided to donate an old tug as well as airstairs of „his“ airport. Thank you so much for your support and your generosity Mr. Scholz, we will be sure to show our gratitude by visiting Frankfurt with the Connie soon!
Our shop at events 2009 (by Willy Althaus)
This past season our shop was able to participate in 7 events. Unfortunately we were only able to offer aircraft tours during two of those events.
The Connie did not land at Mollis until late afternoon on July 11; this was due to thick cloud cover over the mountains. Therefore we could only allow visits of the aircraft on Sunday morning. Due to overall hightened security measures aircraft tours at Berne are no longer permitted. For this reason we moved our shop to the entrance of the terminal. Fortunately this ended up being a lot less of a downfall than we had originally anticipated, despite rainy and windy conditions on Saturday. The early release of our 2010 Connie calendar has contributed significantly to a positive account balances. We also offered a new mousemat at the events in Berne, which was a very popular item for our fans. The early production of our calendar and mousemat has proven to be a great idea. Once again the 3 different sized Connie models were quite popular this year, along with our baseball caps (old and new designs).
2009 has been a very successful year for our shop, we were able to book Fr. 33'000 in revenues. We have also been able to add many interested fans to our member roster through our gift shop, thanks to our shop-team (including Konrad Korsunsky and Marko Mrkonjic)- thank you very much for your tireless efforts and contributions to a successful shop-season! We are confident that in the seasons to come our shop will continue to help support our beautiful aircraft, and keep it flying for many more years!
Souvenir-Shop outlook (by Konrad Korsunsky)
The souvenir shop has had quite a successful year. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all members as well as other aviation and Connie enthusiasts for shopping with us! Your purchases will continue to help keep our Connie flying in the years to come. Thanks to Willy Althaus, Beat Egli and their teams of volunteers we have been able to bring in over 30'000 CHF. during 7 events. In addition there have been significant purchases through our Online-Shop which has been tended year round by Marko Mrkonjic, a very reliable member of our team of volunteers. We are very pleased to report that all recent shop additions have been very popular with our fans. We would like to remind you that we offer a great variety of possible Christmas and holiday gifts in our shop as well. Feel free to browse our Online-Shop from time to time to check our latest arrivals, or to spot some attractive markdowns. Some of our latest additions include our wall calendar for 2010 as well as our mouse pad which also includes a calendar for 2010. Early orders will guarantee a delivery in time for Christmas.
Many new members ! (by Ernst Frei)
As of the publication of this newsletter Marcel Bitter has confirmed 2572 SCFA members; this means that we have been able to add more than 500 new fans to our roster in less than one year. Despite the growing size of our association, Marcel tried very hard in continuing his volunteer work which includes tending to tasks such as sorting and passing on and responding to incoming mail, sending out invoices and flight confirmations, printing out new member ID cards as well as placing calls to members in case of flight cancellations. In addition he also deals with press and general inquiries regarding flight schedules and locations, responds to complaints as well as requests from fans as well as airport managers of big airports but also smaller grass strips all around Europe asking to welcome the Star of Switzerland.
Hans Hintermeister has taken over a small part of Marcel's tasks by tending to our English and French speaking members. He is also responsible for our DC-3 bookings. We truly appreciate everything they have done and hope to continue our great working relationship with these two fine SCFA volunteers!
Translation Catherine Frei