The Final Leg Home

I am a bit delinquent in writing the post for the final leg of our trip from Ketchikan to our home airport KDVO, just north of San Francisco in Marin County with a stop in Olympia Washington on the way.  We embarked on our final leg on Friday July 22nd after several days in Ketchikan and a final farewell dinner with the group.

Jim and I got up early to make sure we could grab a large breakfast, as this would be one of the longest legs of our trip at over 600 nautical miles from Ketchikan to Olympia.  Weather reports were good indicating a low ceiling at Ketchikan but tops of only about 3,000 feet - so once we punched through the clouds we would have clear skies above.  We had filed an IFR flight plan for 9,000 feet and to take off at around 8:30 in the morning.  We knew that most of the group had filed for earlier departures of 7 to 7:30 and we thought we would take our time and avoid the rush.  Little did we know that when we got to the airport, there would be a line of our planes, engines running, waiting in line on the tarmac to take off on their IFR flight plans.  Plus two Alaska Airline flights about to push off from the gates.

We picked up our clearance and contacted Ketchikan radio for permission to taxi and were informed we would have a bit of a wait.  We had full fuel, plenty for the flight so we started up the engine and taxied to our place in the back of the line at the top of the taxiway just short of Rwy 11.  Listening to the chatter we soon learned that the spacing was 15 minutes between GA aircraft and 3-5 minutes after the commercial jets.  There were three planes ahead of us.

After a long wait, and when we were next up, Ketchikan radio asked us to let one of the Alaska Airline commercial jets to take off next, and being the gracious folks that we are we let them know it wouldn't be a problem.  We had now been on the ground, engine running for almost an hour.  Our turn was next, but the second Alaska Flight came on the frequency and began negotiating with Ketchikan Radio to let them go ahead of us.  Kudos to the controller who let Alaska know that they were going to let us go next as we had been waiting for an hour, so we taxied out in front of the 747, got our clearance to take off and were soon climbing through the clouds and on our way home.

The Alaska Airlines pilot wasn't too happy and we could hear him over the radio quizzing ATC what was up with all of these little planes gumming up the works and creating delays for Ketchikan departures.

Before long, we were cruising at 9,000 feet and on our way home.  After an instrument approach into into Olympia, we parked next to the Let's Fly Alaska hangar where Dale was cooking up a post flight lunch of hamburgers and fixings.  After fueling the plane and getting a bite to eat, Jim and I felt good so we decided to skip our overnight in Olympia and pushed on to home.  We arrived shortly before 7 pm and brought our Alaskan Adventure to a close with a long, and thankfully uneventful, flight home.