This week, following the sad death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, I invite you to visit Aberdeen, Scotland, the nearest main airport to Her Majesty's estate at Balmoral, which is reported to be the place The Queen enjoyed visiting the most, and the place where her amazingly long reign came to an end this week.
Scotland is a one of the four countries that comprise the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of Great Britain, Scotland covers an area of 30,000 square miles, including 790 islands. It has a population of about 5.5 million people. Although an integral part of the UK, Scotland has had a devolved Parliament since 1999, which is situated in the capital Edinburgh.
Aberdeen is a city in north-east Scotland, with a population of roughly 200,000 people. It is about 400 miles north of London and just east of the Scottish Highlands. Since the discovery of North Sea oil in 1969, Aberdeen has been known as the offshore oil capital of Europe. As a consequence of this industry, Aberdeen Airport EGPD includes one of the busiest commercial heliports in the world, with approximately 37,000 helicopter movements per year. The airport has one fixed wing runway, which is 6407 feet long and three dedicated helicopter runways.
EuroHarmony offers a range of flights to Aberdeen in Classes 1 to 5, from five of our Hub airports, from Scotland's capital Edinburgh, and also as one leg of the Class 1 route visiting many of the Scottish Islands. Helicopter pilots may also want to practice their skills with onwards flights in our Agusta 109 or Bell 407 to the various oil rigs in the North Sea! There is a list of default FS2004 and FSX oil rig locations on
THIS WEBPAGE.
More detailed add-on scenery of Aberdeen Dyce airport EGPD is available at the usual locations (see week one of this series) and add-on offshore installations for FS2004 & FSX are available from the Offshore Development Group:
http://www.fs-odg.com/forum/index.php. For X-Plane users there is a file called "b_uk_oilfields_1_4.zip" at Flightsim.com.
So, as a tribute to Her Majesty The Queen, why not fly to Scotland this week?
