Our hosts had kindly offered to drive us 60 kms to Bordeaux airport, in time for our planned 10 o'clock departure. This meant leaving Lados at 08:00 hours. Unfortunately, traffic around Bordeaux was heavy and we arrived at the airport about 40 mins late. We adopted easily by delaying our flight plan accordingly. The handling agents at the airport did their job well and all admin tasks as well as refueling were completed fairly quickly.
An uneventful flight of 2.7 hours duration brought us to Luxembourg, where we again enjoyed quick and efficient handling service. Unfortunately, when trying to depart, the starter motor on our aircraft did not want to move, despite trying numerous times. We were forced to suspend our flight plan and contacted our maintenance man in Mainz. After a few phone calls within about one hour, our maintenance man had located an exchange starter motor and was on his way to Luxembourg by car to get us going again. We had in the meantime made arrangements for a potential late arrival in Hildesheim. When all arrangements were made, we tried the starter once more and suddenly it worked. In quick succession we canceled the maintenance man, re-activated the suspended flight plan, notified handling and soon we were on our way.
We reached Hildesheim at 19:00 hours, still well within normal operating hours. We were glad to be back home again and for the first time since weeks enjoyed a dinner ordered from somebody with whom we could communicate properly.
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