Islands of the western Mediterranean, Canary islands and Madeira

This video shows the final departure preparations for the first official part of the expedition "European Islands from the Skies" and the departure itself. more

April 22, 2014

The first flight on the first day of the first part of the expedition "European Islands from the Skies" took me over the Alps to Venice. The trips took about 2,5 hours. From Venice I next flew to Pisa where I spent my first night of the trip. more

April 23, 2014

The second day I departed from Pisa and flew to the scene of Napoleon´s first exile, the island of Elba, where I refuelled. Then I flew via the western coast of Corsica to the airport of Figari. I soon left for Menorca flying over the beautiful town of Bonifacio and then Sardinia. After some three hours of flight over the sea I landed at the airport of Mahon on Menorca. more

April 24, 2014

From the airport of Mahon I continued via the northern coast of Menorca and then Mallorca to the airport of St Bonet near Palma de Mallorca. After some bureaucratic problems and refuelling I departed for Melilla - a Spanish enclave in the north of Africa. I had to struggle with headwinds of about 60 km/s. more

04 October 2014

From Corfu I flew to the island of Zakynthos passing over such famous islands as Ithaca, Cephalonia and Lefkada. After having landed at and flown around Zakynthos I continued to a small private airfield at Messalonghi in the Bay of Patras. Lord Byron lived and died here in 1824. more

April 26, 2014

I spent one night at Lanzarotte and continued on via the island of Fuerteventura, passing by La Palma to the airport of Tenerife Norte - where the worst aviation disaster in history happened in 1977. The airport looks very peaceful and it is difficult to imagine what happened here... more

April 27, 2014

I did a sight-seeing flight from Tenerife Norte - Teide Volcano, Gomera island, La Palma and then on to Madeira. The flight from La Palma to Madeira took some 2,5 hours. Landing at Madeira was quite difficult because of the wild cross-wind. more

April 28, 2014

Day 7 of my trip was a resting day which I spent on the beautiful island of Madeira. more

April 29, 2014

The morning after my rest I departed for a sightseeing trip around Madeira. I flew with Dinarte, a young friendly man working at the airport of Madeira. It was a good idea - he did the photography and guiding and I flew and enjoyed the sight-seeing. Next, I departed for another 5,5 hour flight over the sea to a little airport of Benavente in mainland Portugal. more

April 30, 2014

From the airport of Benavente I flew to Maia at Oporto. Here, a crowd of plane spotters was waiting for me. They asked to come over when they found my flight on the internet. We spent a pleasant afternoon and then I set off to continue to Santiago de Compostella. Half way there I had to turn back because of bad weather - storm, fog, wind, rain. more

May 1, 2014

After a night spent at Oporto I set off again from Maia airport. This time the destination was Biarritz rather than Santiago de Compostella which I had failed to reach the day before. From Biarritz I continued north to the historical city of La Rochelle. more

May 2, 2014

From La Rochelle I flew over St Nazaire - during WWII a German submarine base - to the airport of Quiberon. From there, after a thorough police check of all my on-board equipment I continued north to the airport of Dinard - St Malo. more

May 3, 2014

From Dinard airport I continued via the famous monastery of Mont St Michel to the Landing Beaches at Caen in Normandy and then bypassing Paris to the north landed at Haugeanau after about five hours of a very bumpy flight. A special video documenting the D-Day beaches is available at the History section of prusa.org website. more

May 4, 2014

The flight from Haugenau to Příbram took only about 2,5 hours. There were several aircraft waiting for me over Pilsen and they joined me on the last stretch of my flight to Příbram. About 20 friends awaited me at the airport. more

This first part of the expedition "European Islands from the Skies" was the one most celebrated - there were quite a few people at the departure, several journalists and Portuguese TV during the course of the journey and several aircraft as well as quite a few friends on my return. The video here shows my arrival at Příbram airport after the flight to the Canary islands and Madeira which took over 50 flight hours. more

During the first part of the expedition "European Islands from the Skies" we did not yet have such professional video making capability as we developed later on, so there are no videos for each day of the journey. Instead we made one video comprising short excerpts of each day of the journey. I would now like to show more of the 50 hours or so of video footage made during this trip, and  hope to be able to do so . Until then please enjoy this video. more

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