My First Trip to Hawaii!

Here is my long awaited trip to Hawaii. It certainly was a tough fun trip, and I'm glad I got the opportunity to fly it. As we near the summer transatlantic season, I will be looking forward to my Glasgow trip on US Airways over Memorial Day weekend. It will be my first time flying to Glasgow. Anyway, back to the South Pacific! We took off out of San Francisco at 3:46 local time on runway 28L. Due to our weight, we needed the longer 28L rather than 1L/R. Here we are on our climb out over the Pacific, direct to BEBOP, our oceanic entry point.



After making our way across the Pacific, we are now on our initial descent into Honolulu to complete our 4 hour 51 minute flight. We also have some traffic to our 4 o'clock heading to the northern part of the Hawaiian chain. Throughout the cruise of our flight Michigan State basketball has been playing in the final four against UCONN I believe. I was flying this on 3/27, and if someone could confirm that, that would be great. I was getting ACARS updates constantly in-flight. As we descend there was about 12 minutes left in the 2nd half with MSU up!

After descending via the MAGGI3 arrival we have arrived on 8L in Honolulu/Hickham AFB. I love the close in downwind, and flying final with Pearl Harbor off our left side.

I quickly taxied into the ramp at Honolulu and ran up the jetway to see the final seconds of the MSU game!! WE WON!! Yes! What better way to top off my first Hawaiian trip? AND... I was flying the "Bernie Epple," our first 757-300 named after a long-standing and loyal Northwest flight attendant. I had to venture back onto the plane after the game to finish the shutdown checks, and then snapped a quick picture on the ramp as we waited for the crew bus.

After learning about the island of Oahu, and resting up, I was ready to head back to the lower 48. We checked the latest winds aloft (which we later learned weren't accurate), and loaded our fuel for Northwest 222 Heavy back to San Francisco. Here we are taxiing towards 8R, the "reef runway."

Here we are again taxiing to 8R, with water on both sides of the taxiway. Mind you, I had to get up at 2:50AM EDT for this flight, so ACARS traffic and talk was very light this evening. And to think, I would get up at midnight for a double-leg flight going inter-island then on to Seattle. I am glad I declined that routing! (I would have to get up at mid-night!)

Here we are climbing out past Waikiki beach on the MKK4 departure to CLUTS.

Here we are at cruise about 92nm from CLUTS, our oceanic entry point.

As we check up on things halfway across the Pacific, we realize that the winds are a LOT stronger than reported/forecasted. We report then to San Francisco radio that we will be a little lower on fuel than we normally like to be. At this point, there is no other choice other than to continue on to San Francisco. Our fuel exhaustion point is only going to be about 30 minutes beyond SFO. We kept a very constant watch on fuel consumption, and were able to eventually land in SFO with about 55 minutes of fuel left on board.

Thank you for joining me on my first Hawaiian journey. Stay tuned, as I have a brand new 757 that I look forward to sharing with you all!!

Thanks for visiting,

Joe