A flying stop in Cappadocia or Kapadokya

Turkey has a lot to offer, the more you discover the more you want to know.

After the immersion of Istanbul it is time to go to the Center of Turkey to see what Cappadocia has to offer:

Cappadocia is a historical region in Central Anatolia, largely in Nevşehir Province, in Turkey.

In the time of Herodotus, the Cappadocians were reported as occupying the whole region fromMount Taurus to the vicinity of the Euxine (Black Sea). Cappadocia, in this sense, was bounded in the south by the chain of the Taurus Mountains that separate it from Cilicia, to the east by the upper Euphrates and the Armenian Highland, to the north by Pontus, and to the west byLycaonia and eastern Galatia.^[1]

The name was traditionally used in Christian sources throughout history and is still widely used as an international tourism concept to define a region of exceptional natural wonders, in particular characterized by fairy chimneys and a unique historical and cultural heritage.

But before discovering the place we need to fly there

After the arrival and landing at Ataturk airport, it is time to leave and we have departure slots. We went to be onetime and show our piloting skills

We leave the hotel way ahead of our slot time, to have plenty of time to load the plane, old the Jepp data on the GPS, to review what appears to be a rather complicated departure etc...

And like we all know the best laid plan never work...as the stot time approach we call the clearance delivery for our startup to meet our departure slot at 08:35 local...guess what...our flight plan are not in the system..The handler did not do his job...oh yeah he got paid a lot of money and he does not deliver the basic service.

I run pit of the plane and refile the flight plan for the 5 planes....But wait a minute not so fast...Turkey is part of Eurocontrol...that monster organisation in Brussels and our route need to be approved by the bureaucrats there.....and that takes time.......they must be short staffed.....one of these days someone should explain to me what a domestic flight plan in Turkey need an approval from Brussels...it is beyond me.....

In any case we get it and we are about 30 mn late for our slot..

We proceed with caution  on the ramp see the chart below.

I have to say the most complicated part of flying around the world is not to get lost on the ground at the airport .

For the pilot we were park at the Victor apron and our assign runway was 17L with a Kilo and hold short Kilo 1. We then switched to tower to learn that we are number 13 for take-off.

But the Turkish controller were very good and with shower and red cell on the radar we were vectored around without even asking , then this master handling was followed by direct to waypoint on the route close to a straight line.Very well done.

As we are the first one in Kapadokya, I ask to access the control tower to ahem a commanding view of the landing traffic from AJ.