A trip to Austria - Vienna & Salzburg

Austria, besides its stunning landscape, is full of culture and is steeped in history. There is an abundance of beautiful architecture and extraordinary music. From the outset we, as trip managers, made a decision NOT to limit numbers and to try and include all those who wanted to come. We hadn’t bargained on the enormous appeal! We did eventually have to stop at 80 and start a waiting list. In all we had 37 members take part and with them came over 40 guests in 33 aeroplanes and 4 helicopters… an organisational nightmare but, dare I say it, a stunning success, with enough weather related challenge to keep pilots on their toes.

It is worth mentioning here that due to the numbers of people and aircraft involved it fell to the trip managers to prepare a very detailed and succinct set of orders for the pilots to adhere to, most particularly concerning departure and arrival times at the Airfields to be visited. The aim was to ensure separation between aircraft, efficiency in refuelling and ultimately safety! We feel that we should doff our caps to the pilots and crews concerned as by and large the plans were adhered to and few hiccups occurred. We were particularly pleased to see that the German Air Traffic unit had NOTAM’ed our route as a mass movement of aircraft going from West to East. Langen and Vienna information plainly had their concerns!

A trip of this scale takes an enormous amount of organisation and preparation. The planning of each phase, booking of hotels, transport, venues be they cultural or culinary all takes a huge amount of time and planning… It requires patience and flexibility most particularly as people’s plans inevitably are fluid.

It is fair to say that Sophie Fernandes and Cindy Wimble were the heroines of the safari, the RAS has much to thank them for as do us managers.

11th May arrival at Bremgarten.

The Camrass’s lead the charge and arrived ahead of all of us despite fairly inclement weather. There was an advanced party consisting of the managerial crews that arrived on 10th May ahead of the Sqn invasion of Bremgarten on 11th. The trip was launched from here, under stunning blue skies.

Squadron members arrived in an orderly ow to Bremgarten where we were hosted by Maxi Gainza and his team, in particular Achim Meier who looks after Maxi’s amazing collection of aeroplanes.

With typical quiet but complete generosity Maxi made everyone so welcome with open access to his hanger and, for a few lucky members, a most memorable flight in his Mustang.

What a huge privilege it is to sit in the back and to be given the chance to fly such an historic warbird.

The Fliegerhorst restaurant, another Maxi creation, not only overlooks the airfield but also has windows that look directly on to his marvellous aeroplane collection. Maxi gave the Squadron a tremendous flying display of his Corsair. This was then followed by two delicious wild boar hog roasts which had been turning on the spit since 10 o’clock. The Chef had personally gone in to the forest to acquire the beasties. A wonderful start to our safari.

Sophie’s juggling act of guests between the Krone, Ox, Kreuz and Ibis hotels worked like a dream, with buses and cars transporting all seamlessly. This meant that on the morning of 12th May the carefully managed departure of aircraft to the East went to plan. The weather was fantastic for the longest single leg of our journey of 350 nm to Vienna. Some of the lower and slower were detailed to go via Wels to refuel while the rest flew to Wiener Neustadt where refueling happened with great efficiency… the Squadron arrived in a gentle flow impressing the airfield manager no end with the precision of the plan! We had all had the most fantastic flights over the foothills of the Alps with super views of the snow capped mountaintops to the south and the Danube valley to the north. As with all plans there were one or two tweaks, some decided due to threatening weather to divert to Salzburg and train to Vienna, some of the low and slow got a little held up at Wels where refueling was some what more frustrating. Jonathan Elwes, Susie Whitcombe and Al Haig-Thomas arrived late fighting headwinds and dodging thunderstorms.

We had a wonderful, if somewhat, high paced run around the remarkable city of Vienna. Philip Pedley came as our trip historian. He took a group around the Heeresgeschitliches Museum where he gave a very informative sketch of the key points of Viennese history. Others were given a whistle-stop, but extremely good guided tour of the Kunst Historisches Museum with its world important collection of art.

With a comprehensive list in hand of things to see and restaurants to visit the evening was free to ‘do as you wish’.

On Sunday, 13th May, there was a full programme, many starting at the Wiener Hofmusikkapelle with Mozart’s“Kleine Credo-Messe” sung by the Vienna Boys Choir and the State Opera’s mens choir. This was followed by a dash across the courtyard to the Hofreitschule for a performance of the Spanish Riding School where we were wowed by that equestrian spectacle of magnificent tradition.

The afternoon was busy with an enormous choice of things to do – a guided walking tour with Philip Pedley, a visit to the stables, a dash to the Belvedere for a glimpse of Klimtor a more leisurely horse drawn Fiaker coach ride round Vienna’s top sites.

The night was yet young and there was still more to see. We headed out to the wine producing area of Stammersdorf on the edge of Vienna fora wine tasting at the Wieninger Cellar followed by more wine and a delicious dinner in a traditional Heuriger.

14th May brought an early start and the inevitable grouping of pilots, iPads and weather Apps! It also brought for most of us a stunning flight, well controlled and own over the foothills of the Alps to Salzburg.

The original plan was to get us all landed and collected at the Red Bull’s hanger ready for a fly in by the war birds, which were to consist of Maxi in his Spitfire, the Meiers in a pair of Mustangs and Andrew Holman-West in his Yak 11. But the weather Gods thought otherwise. There was a front sitting firmly over Bremgarten and quietly moving East to Salzburg. Sadly the magnificent War Birds were grounded and our grand arrival at the Red Bull Hangers 7 & 8 was a little less grand, saved only by Jonathan Elwes who had made it in his Tiger Moth. (Incidentally, it was his 41st time of flying it across the Chanel and back). We were however looked after like Royalty by Sylvie Pichler and the Flying Bulls team with a wonderful reception amid the spectacular sight of the immaculately maintained vintage aeroplanes. We had a behind the scenes tour of both hanger 7 & 8 by some of the Red Bull pilots themselves and then a talk by Erich Wolf, the General Manager of Red Bull Air Racing.

Time for a relaxed free evening in by now a weather threatened Salzburg. On the 15th May we gave the crews two options, either to visit Hitler’s Eagles Nest or to go on a guided tour of the magnificently beautiful City of Salzburg and do a wee bit of shopping.

Many went up to the Eagles Nest with Philip Pedley on what was a mind-blowing reflection of a very dark era of history told largely by very grim photographs of the holocaust in the Dokumentation Centre. It is one of those places that ‘should’ be visited. The Eagles Nest itself, high in the Mountains at Berchtesgaden, can only be reached by a single file bus journey up the mountain, a walk through a tunnel 126m deep into the rock face, where there is the original lift with its polished solid brass interior and circular Venetian mirrors and a shaft of 131m to the top. Sadly the weather had closed in on us and we never saw the spectacular mountain panorama.

Back to Salzburg for the Grand Finale! The evening was magnificent.

We began in the Marble Room in Schloss Mirabell with a stunning private concert given by Clemens Zeillinger on piano and David Fruhwirth on the violin. In a room where Mozart himself had played we appropriately began with Mozart’s Linzer-Sonata in B-major, followed by his sonata for piano and violin in G-major. This was then followed by Beethoven’s Sonata for piano and violin in c-minor, Opus 30/2. During the pieces you could have heard a pin drop, we were all spell bound. The clapping was so rapturous at the end that they played two shorter enchanting pieces as encores.

The concert was followed by a Gala dinner at Neustein, in the Arenbergstrasse, the home of the Ferch family who are Coreth relations. We were looked after in true Austrian style and had a simply delicious dinner.

On the 16th May we had plans for the Squadron to fly to a fabulous airfield called Zell am See deep in the Alps. As trip managers we had made a flying recce there hosted by the chief fixed wing pilot from Flying Bulls Raimund Riedmann, we were blown away by the fun and adventure of Alpine flying. Sadly the weather prevented us from fulfilling this last part of our Austrian adventure, it does however leave a ‘must do’ for another day!

As a result our responsibilities ended on the 16th in Salzburg leaving everyone to make their own way home, into a weather front that gave us all interesting challenges and tested our flying skills and judgment. Some stayed another day or two in Salzburg either preplanned or not. Most however set forth on a northerly route to find more appealing weather before swinging west towards the UK.

When Life 360 confirmed that all the aircraft were safely home there was an overall sense of relief. We hope that Austria lived up to its expectations!