5 years on, and Gozen are still a bunch of chancers! Mediocre service, and made huge efforts to charge us double the original quote on departure. I dug my heels in and refused.
If you’re going to Turkey, try someone else.
Great trip report, so nice to see it back on headlines and glad it all went well 
denopa wrote:
“aviation’s a serious business, not like sailing”
The irony is most cars cars/boats that run on diesel have seen water/dirt fuel separators !
While on diesel aircraft, the PIC is expected to sign his TechLog that JetA is clean
My guess is it happened in Ankara. Funnily enough before I left for this trip, my father warned me of sand in the fuel, based on his experience with sailing boats – which I dismissed, “aviation’s a serious business, not like sailing”…
I realize that this post was written before I even took my first flight lesson, but do you have any idea where you might have picked the sand?
Our C172 was out in eastern Europe a while ago and when it came back there was more dirt than usual when draining the fuel.
I guess the fuel in some countries can’t be fully trusted?
Yes; wonderful. From 2014, just before our great May 2014 fly-in to Mali Losinj. I think most of us totally missed the report; easily done with so many posts each day.
What a great trip report!
Thanks!
To conclude this trip, I finally landed back in Fairoaks today, two months after the day we had planned to return. After the Belgrade team cleaned my nozzles, I went there to pick up the plane, only to have a similar episode over Austria; I left the plane with the well regarded PA46 team in Straubing, who found some more clogging, as well as an issue with the MAP controller; I went to pick up the plane again, and again had the same problem, overhead Nuremberg, only more severe- which meant I had to do another deviation, this one in severe VMC though so not as stressful.
In the end, the Straubing team took the fuel system apart and found some small amount of sand; fine enough that there was nothing showing in the fuel filter or when draining fuel, but likely to have caused the issue anyway. I picked up the plane this morning and flew the 3h30 flight back without any incident.
I’m glad this is over obviously, and I think I’ll stick to more traditional destinations for a while!
Hi Jason – you’re perfectly correct to ask. I should have done it formally.
It would have made no difference to ATC’s response. They couldn’t give me a direct approach, there isn’t any (someone pointed out it’s due to terrain rather than international boundaries and indeed it would be a very steep descent).
But it would have been appropriate.
I’m not quite sure why I didn’t.
What a great report. One question and this is definitely not intended to be a criticism – you handled it very well. Did you consider declaring an emergency when the engine problem occurred?
Excellent report, Denopa. Envious, I also want to go on long international trips! Hopefully soon (test flew the plane after 7 months of engine overhauls yesterday).
Anyway, it’s becoming clearer and clearer to me that any trips in, shall we say, “less developed” countries (or GA unfriendly) needs a plane with great range. Long range seems to be key in these areas, allowing you to bypass places where they either fleece you or don’t have Avgas/facilities – or both. First upgrade I’m doing is installing the 44gal aux fuel tank in the baggage compartment. It actually allows you to overfill the main tank, so the full capacity is an additional 60gal. That extends my range at max economy by about 550nm. 1500nm trips are easily achieved.
