Emergency!

The opera is never over until the fat lady sings. A trip is never complete until you've safely landed and shutdown the engines!

After landing in Wick from Reykjavik I thought we had made it. No more overwater sectors to fly. Just two more hours and we would be in London home territory. We had just reached level cruise at 23,000 feet having departed Wick toward Aberdeen en route to Fairoaks airport. Mary Ellen noticed large amounts of oil on the left hand engine cowling. I asked air traffic control for a diversion to Dundee airport which was 10 minutes away from our position. They asked if I was declaring an emergency and I explained that we were losing oil but that we still had normal indications on the instruments and would continue without declaring at the present time. They asked how many souls were on board.

Those were a tense 10 minutes!

I pulled the power back to save the engine from working so hard. We began a rapid descent. You never realize how far up you are until you need to get down! It took about 12 minutes to descend through the clouds to the circuit height at Dundee airport. Fortunately we broke out of the weather for a visual approach on RW10. The winds were 100 at 18 knots. We made one last orbit to get lower and lined up for the final approach when we noticed the smoke coming out of the left engine! We guessed that it was just the oil dripping onto the hot engine since the fire sensor hadn't lit up. We put the plane down on the runway and watched out the window to see if we were going to explode into flames and have to evacuate! More puffs of smoke. They parked us in front of the fire station with a couple of firemen there to help us position the plane. Fortunately everything calmed down and the smoke stopped when the engine was shut down.

Once we caught our breath it was time to see the cause of our oil leak. As Mary Ellen had suspected, the oil cap was not fully secure after topping up the oil in Wick. The back half the cap was off allowing the air pressure to suck out about a quart of oil. It looked terrible all over the left side of the plane and the smoke added drama, but in the end we were lucky that no damage occured and no harm done. We spent an hour cleaning up the mess, added replacement oil, refiled out flight plan, paid a whopping £50 in landing fees (which would have been free in America) and headed on our way to Fairoaks.

2 hours later we landed at our intended end of the route. A friend John was on hand to say hello. A few minutes later an old flying buddy Alan landed in a Navajo. It was like old times. I took my first solo flight at Fairoaks and did my private pilot training there. Home sweet home!

It took 29.5 flight hours from San Jose International airport, via NY to London.

• Photos from June 14 Iceland -> UK