"EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT"

The routing we take down to CUN (Cancun) and back tomorrow is shown on the left. As you can see it cuts the western section of Cuban airspace. Since we have no overflight authority on this particular flight, we must be navigationaly vigilant so as not to stray into Cuban airspace or we will be intercepted by Cuban MIGS as per the warning on our navigation charts. On this flight there won't be much sight seeing since I will have my yearly "line check". I do like this flight since it's a relativey short duty day of 10:50 HRS. and the sights are pretty good as well. Crossing the Appalachian mountains is nice in the moring especially when the valley's are fogged in. Not so nice is the wicked thunderstorms over the Florida pan-handle and Gulf of Mexico during the summer months, let me tell ya. During our descent into CUN, we're lucky enough to be afforded an excellent view of some nice beaches on the northern shore of the Yucatan Peninsula.

In the above picture you can see a typical approach view as we make our way to the runway in the bottom right corner on the picture. During this time, we can see very flat jungle as far as the eye can see as well as hundreds of sinkholes many miles into the jungle. Most are inter-connected caves that offer the best scuba diving in the world. The Chixulub crater is the most facinating feature of the Yucatan. Although barely discernible, one must think that it was here, the very spot we are flying over, that a meteorite, more than 180 km in diameter, slammed into the peninsula, hurtling millions of tons of debris into the atmosphere thus blocking out the sunlight for years and eventually snuffing out the age of the dinosaurs. I've been lucky to fly over the Barringer Crater in Arizona, and the Manicouagan crater and Clearwater Lakes in northern Quebec.
Here is the flight info for Nov 14th's flight:
SSV 3072 YYZ-CUN
SSV 3073 CUN-YYZ Landing at 15:25.
If interested you can follow along with both the flight tracker and Air Traffic Control (ATC)functions on the left side of the page. If following along with ATC, our call sign and flight number (SKYTOUR 3073) won't be heard until about 10 minutes before our scheduled arrival time (eg 15:15). Please leave a comment and let me know how these "trackers" work! I will now leave you with a video of a typical approach into CUN (I'm flying)...(click here)