I was impressed right away by the way Nicolas managed the Mooney, something I have probably never mentioned to him. In only a short time he absorbed many things that took me 55 years to learn bit by bit. Long before he himself learned to fly, Nicolas was an enthusiastic passenger.
My flight training with Geiger taught me to react to unusual flight situations quickly and simply to fly „by the seat of my pants”. Nevertheless, I never try to tempt fate by maneuvering myself needlessly into difficult situations. Once, when I asked Geiger how best to fly in a thunder storm, he answered „That is matter, not air; don´t do it!” I experienced it once later, and that was enough for me. Nicolas, on the other hand, appears to be hypnotically attracted by towering storm clouds. He imagines what it would be like to fly slalom through a field of stormy towers. We differ in our assessment of this situation. Shortly before our great journey, we took off with a full load for Sardinia to see how the aircraft would perform at that load. A „dress rehearsal”, so to speak. Nicolas was at the controls. As he climbed past 4,500 metres near Zurich, he noticed that the engine´s charge air pressure was dropping suspiciously. We notified Zurich that we needed to land there for technical reasons. Zurich asked if this was an emergency. „No,” we responded. Nevertheless we were given our own radio frequency, and the fire department came out to be on hand for the landing, an astonishing service. It soon turned out that the duct from the turbocharger to the intercooler had come off. The engine was performing at only a fraction of its normal capacity. It was clear that Nicolas performs outstandingly under pressure.
Both during that flight and our subsequent curcumnavigating of the globe, there were never cross words. Both of us were „generous” about quelling them right at the onset. After all, we both knew that only a seamlessly functioning team would be able to surmount the difficulties of the flight. Looking back at the flight from Zurich through Sydney to Vancouver, I experience a feeling of deep gratitude that our collaboration functioned so well. Here a word about the famous expression „Cockpit Resource Management” is appropriate. Our division of task assignments had been discussed and clearly agreed on: I fly, you take over navigation and radio communications, etc. In actual fact, this division of tasks vanished immediately upon reaching cruising speed, with its long periods of quiet. Often when I was about to adjust the radios or the navigation devices to new frequencies or directions, Nicolas had them already changed. On the other hand, I was willing to take over in Hong Kong so that he could take pictures shortly before landing. But no matter what happened, flying priorities always took first place at the right moment.