Busan (부산), Korea

I've been to the town of Busan (also known as Pusan) twice now since I arrived in Korea. It's located on the southeast coast of Seoul and is Korea's largest city next to Seoul at 3.65 mill. My first trip was to the Korean Airlines CCIP factory to pick up a jet from the depot. If you remember back to last summer at Aviano, I made a couple trips to Greece in order to flight test and pick up a few jets that were going through a major avionics upgrade. Well, here in Korea we send the jets to Busan where the same upgrade is done by Korean Airlines. A couple weeks ago on a Monday night, I took the KTX (Korean bullet train) to Busan in order to perform a functional check flight (FCF) on Tuesday morning and fly the jet back to Kunsan in the afternoon. I stayed in the Lotte Hotel...a very nice hotel where I was given access to the business suite on the 33rd floor. The airport I flew out of was Gimhae International. Had I been quicker with my camera while waiting for takeoff, I could have snapped a picture of the Lufthansa jet if front of me holding short of the runway...Lana will actually be flying to Busan this coming Saturday (sorry Babe =).

The second time was this past weekend for what our squadron calls "Money Night." The name says it all...we get dressed up for a nice dinner and night out without minding how much it costs (that's very difficult for a Ferguson to do by the way). The weekend included a trip to the local aquarium and beach before the night's events which took place at our hotel. It was enjoyable to get away from Kunsan again, but of course would have been much better had Lana been in town. But, she's in the air currently and will be here tomorrow early in the afternoon! Until the next time...

More Pictures:

Busan, Korea

Video:

This is a video of my FCF takeoff from Gimhae, Korea...yes, it's as fun as it looks!