Part 2

So we blasted off from po-dunk IA on our way to our base in the south. The flight was uneventful and the plane flew just fine. After some minor re-routing from ATC due to storms along the FINGR.3 arrival, we landed just about the same time our freight arrived. We loaded up our cargo, topped off the tanks and again hustled into the sky. Going into Mexico is not fun. Add in night time in mountainous terrain and you have yourself an interesting flight. On the way over, I updated our Jepp plates and carefully reviewed the arrival and approach we could reasonably expect. We always put more emphasis on briefing approaches in Mexico due to the fact that they are usually always associated with some sort of DME ARC and/or are non precision approaches. A majority of the time we are arriving after approach controllers have gone home and are operating on limited ATC services. There are numerous step downs/altitudes to comply with along our approach, so the captain and I discuss our plan of attack. Its my leg, so I'll be doing the easy work while the captain is calling out the step downs, tuning the radios, talking to ATC and guiding me along the ARC to our inbound radial. Once we hit the inbound radial, I start my inbound turn to the VOR. I track the inbound radial and start stepping down my altitudes. As we get closer to the VOR the needles get more sensitive so I have to stay on top of things to keep the needles centered. As we pass over the station, we make a slight turn to the left for the final approach segment and start our descent to the MDA (minimum descent altitude). It just so happens that its a clear night so we saw the runway from 20 miles out, but we follow the approach path anyway. Accepting a visual approach at night in the mountains is a recipe for disaster. I make a decent landing and we taxi over to the cargo ramp. We off loaded our cargo(actually the Mexican ramp workers off loaded for us) and found out we had another trip waiting for us. We were to head back to Laredo, fuel up, clear customs and head back to another Mexican city to pick up freight. From there we were to fly to our base in the south west to clear customs again, fuel up and continue on to our base in the south for a crew change. Turns out the cargo was going to our base in the north, but we didn't have enough duty time left to complete the trip. Didn't break my heart that we couldn't finish the trip, but I was sad to see our plane go. It was one of our better Falcons. So after about 9 hours in the air and 13.5 duty hours, we ended our day and headed to the hotel for some much needed sleep.