Paul Lomatschinsky takes part in a comemorative flight across the Atlantic in a Diamond DA42 Twin Star. The flight, which took place in Feb 2009, was to comemorate the 90th anniversary of Alcock and Brown’s first non-stop flight from Newfoundland to Ireland in 1919.

Listen to Episode 16

Paul Lomatschinsky flew a Diamond Twin Star DA42 across the Atlantic earlier this year to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the first non-stop flight from America to Europe in 1919. That first flight was by Alcock and Brown in an open cockpit Vickers Vimy biplane.
Paul was interested in flying from a very early age and after gaining his PPL at Swanton Morley in Norfolk, he went to the US to get his CPL. After failing to find work back home in the UK he went back to the US to get his flying istructor rating. He then taught flying at Woodbridge, a US Air Force base here in England.
Following a spell running a flying school in Nigeria, Paul left aviation to raise a family, not returning to the industry until over 20 years later.
Paul now concentrates on teaching individuals that need high level flying tuition and he is offered intereting jobs, from time to time, such as the trans-Atlantic flight with Terry Sefton Potter. In order to commemorate the 90th anniversary of Alcock and Brown’s flight across the Atlantic in 1919, Terry hired Paul to co-pilot a Diamond Twin Star DA42. Paul had long harboured a wish to fly the Atlantic so he accepted the project. The DA42 was ideally suited to the task, being economical, having twin engines and having a state of the art glass cockpit.

If you’d like to read more about the original Alcock and Brown flight Paul recommends `Yesterday We Were in America’ by Brendan Lynch.

Paul and Terry picked up the aircraft from Diamond’s factory in Wiener Neustadt, Austria and eventually positioned it in Cannes to begin the flight. In order to get the aircraft to the North American mainland to begin the flight, they first flew the aircraft via Cardiff and Wick to Iceland. Paul then flew alone from Reykjavik to Goose Bay in Newfoundland. Terry then returned for the final leg to St John’s, Newfoundland where the trans-Atlantic flight was to commence.

DA42 frozen in

After several delays due to bad weather, the flight took off from St John’s en route to Swansea. The aircraft had a flight duration of over 14 hours, carrying approx 140 gallons of fuel and burning roughly 4.8 gallons per hour per engine at 50% cruise. The planned flight was proposed to be 11hrs with a healthy tail wind, so they had plenty of fuel to spare.

They flew at 18000 feet for most of the way to avoid icing and they eventually arrived, without incident, over Ireland after approx 9 hours flying time. Unlike Alcock and Brown they managed to avoid landing in an Irish bog and they proceeded to their intended destination of Swansea. Low cloud and fog prevented them landing at Swansea so they diverted to Cardiff, just managing to land before the fog closed that airport too.

Over the Atlantic

Paul has flown that Atlantic again since and he intends to offer a ferry service as part of his current business.

Paul’s present company, Individually Tailored Flight Training, offers the following services:

Customised flight training

Accompanied training in USA

Safety pilot services

Familiarization training in new aircraft

Consultation on Aircraft Purchase

Pilot hire for airways and

Instrument flights

Paul’s web site is Individually Tailored Flight Training:

www.itftuk.com

Office tel: 01476 879040

Mobile tel: 07951 361829