Platinum Airways

Our Destination of the Week challenge features a new destination airport on a weekly basis. Every week we get to fly to a remote or a big commercial airport, depending on the monthly theme. Although there are multiple airports in the theme, each one is a separate destination and not linked in any way other than the common theme.

The Rules:

1. Depart in the aircraft of your choice from the airport of your choice, anywhere in the world (as long as you respect maximum flight hours). Consider this a new "cold start" flight.
2. Fly to the Destination of the Week airport.
3. On completion of the flight, go to the PIREP page and file your flight as a DOTW mission. There is no flight tracking software involved. This is purely a fun exercise. Enjoy!

Welcome to our Legacy Destinations of the Week!

As our president, Stijn, announced in our March 2020 Newsletter our Destination of the Week officially comes to a close after 500 weeks of running. This means that we are now in DOTW ReRun mode. The original thought was to start with the very first DOTW, HUEN, however we had to consider DOTW theme timing. Some DOTW's are seasonal or calendar themed while others are holiday themed.

We want to thank Stijn for his DOTW creative efforts. The DOTW series has been a masterful effort on his part and unarguably one of our most successful programs here at Platinum Airways.

Stijn, if you live to be 100 years old, that will be 10% of your life dedicated to Platinum Airways. We can never thank you enough!

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Hello all and welcome to our Destination of the Week. This week, we'll conclude our Ash theme with a visit to the volcano that threatens the largest population living in its shadow: Mount Vesuvius in the gulf of Naples, Italy. It is one of several volcanoes which form the Campanian volcanic arc. Vesuvius consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and originally much higher structure.

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Mount Vesuvius is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to the burying and destruction of the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. That eruption ejected a cloud of stones, ash and fumes to a height of 33 km (20.5 mi), spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima bombing. An estimated 16,000 people died due to hydrothermal pyroclastic flows. The only surviving eyewitness account of the event consists of two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus.

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Vesuvius has erupted many times since and is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years. Today, it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3 million people living nearby and its tendency towards explosive (Plinian) eruptions. It is the most densely populated volcanic region in the world.

Vesuvius is a distinctive "humpbacked" mountain, consisting of a large cone (Gran Cono) partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and originally much higher structure called Monte Somma. The Gran Cono was produced during the eruption of AD 79. The caldera started forming during an eruption some 15-20,000 years ago and was enlarged by later paroxysmal eruptions ending in the one of AD 79.

The height of the main cone has been constantly changed by eruptions but is 1,281 m (4,203 ft) at present. Monte Somma is 1,149 m (3,770 ft) high, separated from the main cone by the valley of Atrio di Cavallo, which is some 5 km (3.1 mi) long. The slopes of the mountain are scarred by lava flows but are heavily vegetated, with scrub and forest at higher altitudes and vineyards lower down. Vesuvius is still regarded as an active volcano, although its current activity produces little more than steam from vents at the bottom of the crater.

Vesuvius was formed as a result of the collision of two tectonic plates, the African and the Eurasian. The former was subducted beneath the latter, deeper into the earth. Because magma is less dense than the solid rock around it, it was pushed upward. Finding a weak place at the Earth's surface it broke through, producing the volcano.

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Mount Vesuvius has erupted many times. The famous eruption in 79 AD was preceded by numerous others in prehistory, including at least three significantly larger ones, the best known being the Avellino eruption around 1800 BC which engulfed several Bronze Age settlements. Since 79 AD, the volcano has also erupted repeatedly, in 172, 203, 222, possibly 303, 379, 472, 512, 536, 685, 787, around 860, around 900, 968, 991, 999, 1006, 1037, 1049, around 1073, 1139, 1150, and there may have been eruptions in 1270, 1347 and 1500. The volcano erupted again in 1631, six times in the 18th century, eight times in the 19th century (notably in 1872), and in 1906, 1929, and 1944. There has been no eruption since 1944, and none of the post-79 eruptions were as large or destructive as the Pompeian one.

On occasion, eruptions from Vesuvius have been so large that the whole of southern Europe has been blanketed by ash; in 472 and 1631, Vesuvian ash fell on Constantinople (Istanbul), over 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) away. A few times since 1944, landslides in the crater have raised clouds of ash dust, raising false alarms of an eruption.

The government emergency plan for an eruption assumes that the worst case will be an eruption of similar size and type to the 1631 VEI 4 one. In this scenario the slopes of the mountain, extending out to about 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) from the vent, may be exposed to pyroclastic flows sweeping down them, whilst much of the surrounding area could suffer from tephra falls. The plan assumes between two weeks and 20 days' notice of an eruption and foresees the emergency evacuation of 600,000 people, almost entirely comprising all those living in the zona rossa ("red zone"), i.e. at greatest risk from pyroclastic flows. However, the dilemma that would face those implementing the plan is when to start this massive evacuation, since if it is left too late then thousands could be killed, while if it is started too early then the precursors of the eruption may turn out to have been a false alarm. In 1984, 40,000 people were evacuated from the Campi Flegrei area, another volcanic complex near Naples, but no eruption occurred.

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The clopsest airport to Mount Vesuvius is Naples International Airport (LIRN), 5.9 km or 3.7 mi north-northeast of the city in the Capodichino district of Naples. The airport has two terminal buildings: Terminal 1 is for departing travellers and Terminal 2, located away from the airfield, is used for charter operations. Naples, with a metropolitan population of nearly three million is the largest metropolitan area of Europe which does not serve as a hub nor secondary hub of any airline.

The district of Capodichino - in the area known as "Campo di Marte" - hosted in 1910 the first flight exhibitions in Naples. During the First World War, "Campo di Marte" became a military airport in order to defend the town against Austro-Hungarian and German air attacks. Dedicated to Ugo Niutta (an Italian aviator), Capodichino Airport was a military air base during the Fascist Era and Second World War.

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During World War II the airport was used by the United States Army Air Forces extensively during the Italian Campaign. It was used by the Twelfth Air Force as a combat airfield, which stationed several units at the airport. When the combat units moved out, Air Transport Command used the airport as a major transshipment hub for cargo, transiting aircraft and personnel for the remainder of the war.

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