Most of the group will have to stop in Gibraltar on Saturday to refuel and will have some lunch while they are there. It's an 880 nm flight from Paris so it is at the safe maximum range of most of the airplanes we're traveling with. Having to stop means that it'll be about four extra hours on the ground between paperwork, landing fees, refueling, taxis to lunch as well as staggered arrival and departures (they have to close the main road in and out of Gibraltar whenever airplanes land or takeoff as the road crosses the middle of the runway!). Since I've already been to Gibraltar and Tracy said (all that's there is a 'big rock with monkeys'!) we decided to skip it and fly directly to Marrakech from Paris. The weather looks like it might be a little rainy in Paris but is always nice in North Africa so we're looking forward to warming up a bit after the cold of Greenland, Iceland and Scotland.
It's about 1250 nm and well within the range of our wonderful Pilatus PC-12 so why not eat snacks, drink mineral water and cruise along at FL290 for five hours and be at the resort enjoying a massage or something while everyone else comes in later that evening? Another capable airplane in the group, a Cessna Conquest II, will also do this long leg with us so we'll enjoy chatting with them along the way as well. This is one of many big advantages of our airplane versus the others. On shorts legs, most of the rest of the airplanes along have beaten us to the next destination by a bit, on this (and any number of future) long legs, we'll blow them out of the water on arrival time. It's also quite a bit cheaper to skip stopping in some of the fuel stops as landing and handling fees can be quite expensive.