James just called me (at 5.45 pm SA time) to say that they are not able to get away today. A few reasons .. Mauritius ATC will not let them fly through their airspace on a VFR flight plan at night – plus they do not have permission to fly though their airspace anyway (yet). James and Jean tried to arrange the permission quickly themselves but they need Michelle at Flight Permits help she is working on it and will have the permission by tomorrow morning.
This also gives us the opportunity to get the tracker working properly which it isn’t yet.
They have pushed TAF back into the hangar and are now on their way to a hotel near to the airport. Luckily the guys from the Reunion Aeroclub are super enthusiastic and helpful and are taking good care of them.
An interesting thing about fuel AVGAS on Reunion is €3.90 / L while Mogas is €1.50 / L. Luckily they had assistance from the local pilots to fill up with Mogas they put 300 L in to top up which means they are burning about 20.5 L/hr at something like 110 KTAS. Tomorrow we will try to get info (and help from the locals) about fuel in Male in case the AVGAS is also very expensive there.
We are all a bit concerned about the next few legs they are going to be flying through the ITCZ which means thunderstorms and unpredictable weather so we have to be very accurate with predicting exactly where the storms are. Have a look for yourself on http://www.vfrplanner.co.za/mwx/sling.html
As soon as we know more about their new departure time tomorrow or anything else of interest, we will post the details immediately.
Cheers Mike
