Peshawar to Tashkent in a LET L-410 UVP-E on February 13, 2005

Peshawar to Tashkent in a LET L-410 UVP-E

LivewireExpress flight 3437 is a three hour flight that starts off at Peshawar International in Peshawar, Pakistan and finishes at Tashkent Yuzny in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Today's journal will contain 15 images.

Typically, this is an all-night flight. However, N130LE was delayed on an earlier legs between Tashkent and both Samarkand, Uzbekistan and Maimana, Afghanistan, so we were unable to take off until just an hour before dawn.

After takeoff, we started our climb to FL240. Behind and to the right you can see the pre-dawn lights of Peshawar.

A luminscent cloudscape forms below as we reach FL220. At this point, I began to have instrumentation problems which resolved when I descended back down to FS200. Therefore, I decided to cruise the remainder of the flight at that flight level.

As the sun prepares to rise, majestic mountains rise up to greet us. Unfortunately, 105 knot headwinds do the same for a while. Kabul lies below.

Despite our altitude of 20,000 feet, the mountains of Afghanistan seem so close.

The sun finally breaks over the distant clouds...

...playing off the mountains and creating wonderful contrasts...

...as low clouds fill the valleys below.

We continue on course, still flying over the Afghani mountains.

For a long while, the mountains drifted into the distance behind us and a expansive carpet of clouds stretched out to the limit of our vision ahead of us. Beneath those clouds lies Tajikistan.

As we reach into Uzbekistan, we are greeted again by mountainous terrain.

I took some time trying to compose this picture while on autopilot. Unfortunately, ILS was doing a poor job of following the glidepath. So, after I snapped this shot, I took the yoke and flew the remainder of the flight.

Just a moment before touchdown we can see Tashkent Tower in the background as we are dusted with a light snow.

Taxiing to our gate, the snow stops, and we spot one of our good friends from EuroLivewire.

Unfortunately, due to the nature of such flights with other legs needed to be flown, it must be made whether passengers were booked or not. This was true again in this case with no passengers aboard, losing the airline $1,834.40.

I hope you all enjoyed!