SLCB - SLLP
Jorge Wilstermann International Airport - El Alto International Airport
We depart from Cochabamba and head northwest to La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia.
Upon reading the SID (standard departure procedures) for Cochabamba, I noticed that all of them took me first southwest. But I needed to go northwest, which seems like an unnecessary waste of time and fuel. Why go south first when you need to go north? But once I lined up with runway 32, it was clear why:
See those mountains in front? They go up to 15000ft. So no, a straight-out departure from runway 32 in Cochabamba is not a good thing, and no standard departure allows it. But we are in a flight sim, so we could not care less. I was confident the TBM could handle it, and I setup a straight out departure.
Since the elevation of Cochabamba is 8630ft, the TBM does not have a lot of power. The performance of the plane is severely impacted by altitude. So I setup up an aggressive angle of attack upwards, while keeping the indicated airspeed as close as possible to the stall speed. This allows me to have a high vertical speed, while having the lowest ground speed possible (thus covering shorter horizontal distance while I climb). The strategy turned out to be good, and I managed to clear those mountains at 18500ft:
I’ve never had the TBM climb so fast in such a short distance. Don’t try this in real life people. You’ll probably lose your pilot’s license if you do this type of dumb shit.
El Alto International Airport serves La Paz, Bolivia’s capital city. It is the highest international airport in the world (13325ft), and the sixth highest overall. Only regional commercial airports in China are higher than El Alto. The runway in use is 10, because the other side of the runway has some serious mountains right behind it, so you don’t want to approach the airport from there.
On final approach, I noticed how hard the engine had to work to keep up with the approach speed. Typically, when you are on final approach to the runway, you almost idle out the engine and that is enough to keep the approach airspeed. But at 13000ft, I had to put the engine at 50% capacity to keep the approach airspeed.
I am glad El Alto has pretty long runways. I’m going to need all that space to get the hell out of here when I take off.
This is going to be our last stop in Bolivia. We now continue our journey north to Peru. Another country settled in the Andes mountain range. Although I don’t expect the crazy altitudes we saw in north Chile and Bolivia.
The landscape in Bolivia was certainly impressive and breathtaking. I have a lot of respect for the real-life pilots that fly these tough mountain ranges. Kudos for y’all, tough aviators!
