A FLEDGLING PILOT FLEEING THE NEST......OR ALTERNATIVELY WHAT LED ME TO BE ABLE TO BE AND DO WHAT I AM TODAY.......

‘Sharks prefer women who wear brightly coloured bikinis.’ A great tag line!

No, I have not been at the Absinthe again! It’s actually a statement of fact to do with how the profile of the body is broken up; a statement which rather loosely was involved in how I chose my future career whilst I was at school. Let me explain…..

It all started on the first day at my senior school. I was sitting at the table in my class of thirty pupils next to my new best friend Peter, someone whom I had known for almost forty minutes. This was how long it took for him to try and convince me of where my future lay.  

When the teacher went around the class asking us eleven year olds what we would like to do when we left school, Peter kept saying, “You want to be a banker like my Dad, he makes lots of money!” Now I might only have been eleven years old, but it was obvious to me that I would have way more fun being a pilot than working in a bank.  

Thinking about the choice for a second or two, I replied, ‘Pilot, Sir. That’s what I’d like to be.’ This was met with the same sigh that was meted out to the first boy who said he wanted to be an astronaut. But it was the truth, and would prove to be rather prophetic, even if it did disappoint Peter, my new ex-best friend.  

My “posh” grammar school was built next to a rough South London housing estate. When my friends and I navigated our way through the local roads we always had to be on our guard because the local boys who came from other schools saw us as the enemy. On one particular morning I was rushing to get to school before our assembly, and running late as usual courtesy of British rail. Now I was not the biggest boy in the class, kind of wiry but could move when required, especially when being chased. As I was looking one way a couple of bullies from the local comprehensive pounced on me, one with his hand on my blazer collar, the other trying to snatch my schoolbag which contained my packed lunch and tuck shop money! Ducking a couple of well judged punches, I managed to break free and leg it, complete with schoolbag.  I ran like a whippet and my lungs felt as if they would burst. I made it to safety inside the school grounds and turned around to see my two adversaries standing at a distance, watching.  A wry smile and I was gone. 

For many years I would stare out of the classroom window, my eyes were drawn to the listed control tower of the historical airport where we were located, this protruded above the warehouses opposite. I dreamt of 35,000 feet not algebra! Often to break this reverie, an expertly thrown wooden board duster would arc its way above my classmates, bouncing off my head and sorely bringing me back to the present! I can honestly say that it was thrown at some speed and practiced accuracy by my psychotic class teacher. This was years before the words nanny state or political correctness could be found among the Daily Mail’s headlines and an action which I have a hunch would probably be frowned upon these days! 

To my delight and the possible excuse for my lack of attention, the school was nostalgically located on the site of the old Croydon airport. Steeped in history and legend, this is where the romance of flying with Imperial Airways on those pre-war routes promised adventure. The daydreams flooding my mind took me to destinations which took days and sometimes weeks to complete; to the once pink areas printed on the maps of the Far East and Africa, far flung colonies once literally belonging to the wealthy and the powerful of Great Britain.

A couple of years later, ideas for my future career took a swerve and changed to that of an Ichthyologist, a long word which I liked immensely, not least because it sounded a lot grander than a fish-expert; a word which I took from the then blockbuster film, “Jaws”.  However, this was to prove to be a poor choice of career, as technically, I fell at the first hurdle. You see, I was to find out that the concept of diving and being submerged scared the hell out of me! You just never knew what you might meet swimming around down there. I had recently seen the science fiction film “The Abyss”, which raised many spooky concerns about the oceans within me. I still liked the idea in principal and I was not yet totally discouraged.   

It was after watching the film “The Deep” starring Jacqueline Bisset that I resolved to start putting into action some of my ideas. Being tasked with making something practical in my metalwork class, I became convinced that a life swanning around on boats in and out of the ocean was the life for me.  

For my metalwork project I decided to make a bang stick. This is a long hollow metal pole with a trigger mechanism, allowing you from a short but safe distance to discharge a shell or bullet into the fish of your choice, primarily to discourage it from turning you into lunch, but more likely an underwater pea shooter when faced with a twenty foot great white shark. If ever used in anger, “We’re going to need a bigger stick” would have been an apt phrase I should think.

It was another boy in the class who came to my rescue in putting the finishing touches to my project. Lawrence, who travelled back and forth to school on the train with me every day provided the most important piece. At weekends he often went shooting with his Dad on a local farm, and whilst he was definitely not the sharpest knife in the drawer, he’d always try to help you out if he could. I persuaded him to give me one of his shotgun cartridges which was necessary to test out my bang stick.

After a couple of weeks slow progress, my device was completed and ready for testing. Now even those with a poor knowledge of geography will not be surprised to find out that there is not a great deal of opportunity to come across a great white, or any other shark for that matter in Croydon, South London. I now know this sounds a bit foolish, but having no sharks to practice on, and discounting the idea of trying it out on Ian, the class bully, I wedged one end of my yet to be patented super-weapon into a vice to steady it. So far no-one was taking a blind bit of interest in me, so with the cartridge in place, I pressed my spring loaded trigger. Nothing happened. I resorted to plan B and did what any thirteen year old boy would do. I hit the trigger with a hammer.

Now I don’t know if you have ever discharged a firearm in a small school workshop, but it tends to be somewhat of an attention grabber! This was obviously pre Columbine, but any probation worker worth his salt would say that at that moment I was heading at great speed in that direction. 

The plaster on the wall six feet away disintegrated and so did any prospect of my receiving a credit for my work. The other boys in my vicinity stared, stunned at the devastation that I had created. My teacher stared in disbelief, no doubt thinking one of his lathes or drills had self-destructed and that he would be personally to blame for any boys returning home minus an arm or two. On recognising that my project was still firmly locked in the jaws of the vice and giving the game away as it was still smoking, he realised that it was one of his idiot pupils who had inadvertently redesigned his workshop. My class was rapidly dismissed, all except for me.  I could see a new found look of respect in the eyes of some of my classmates as they passed me by, heading out of the door. My teacher, with a different look in his eyes, took me to one side, bent me over and gave me the caning of my life. Looking back, I think only one of us enjoyed this punishment.

This was the final nail in the coffin of me becoming the next Jacques Cousteau, that and the fact that I was also kicked out of all biology lectures for kidnapping the class gerbils. You see, I could not stand the fact that they were to be gassed and then dissected by us. My mission and I chose to accept it, was to liberate the two of them from their cage and give them their freedom, although it would turn out to be slightly premature. On the train home from school my furry prisoners were snuggled inside my blazer pocket. Seeing one of the girls who used to catch the same train, I told her to look in my pocket and see what she could find - this was said with all the innocence of a choirboy. Of course, this was too tempting for her but I was still not prepared for the scream and rapidly becoming the centre of attention. I quickly removed the gerbils to my less than secure schoolbag where they enacted their own version of “The Great Escape”.  

There were not many places for them to scurry to on a British Rail second class carriage, and after a quick search I found them hiding under the train carriage’s rear bench seat beneath the feet of an elderly couple. My “so called” friends abandoned me and changed carriages at the next station and I decided that it was probably prudent that I do the same. The two rodents were left to live out their lives feasting on discarded cigarette butts and dropped food scraps whilst riding on the number 37 train between London’s Victoria station and Epsom Downs. In hindsight, I am not sure which would have been the longer or better future for them, the promise of the school gas chamber or an unofficial season ticket for life on British Rail.

A change of career was needed and I decided to commit my endeavours from that moment on to achieving my new and more realistic goal, that of becoming an airline pilot. The rest as they say is history. Though my interest in brightly coloured bikinis never diminished!

Now that I knew what I wanted to do and I was approaching my ‘oh so’ important ‘O’ level exams, I was tasked with coming up with a plan for my future and decided to seek professional advice. My attempt at soliciting advice on how to become a pilot from my Careers Master was as successful as Vlad the Impaler lobbying to win the Nobel Peace Prize! I am sure that the thought of me piloting my alleged educational mentor and his family on his holidays at sometime in the future might not have been too far from the back of his mind and have some bearing on his lack of enthusiasm for my choice.

With as little assistance as he could possibly get away with, and trying to divert me away from my lofty ambitions, he suggested that a career in insurance or possibly the military could be interesting. Handing me a few leaflets on the R.A.F. I was sent on my way.  I considered the R.A.F. for the best part of ten minutes whilst in the queue for the tuck shop and discounted it for multiple reasons; discipline, cowardice, university attendance all cropping up on the con side of the argument.

This left me at an impasse, but fate was to deal me a surprising ace. A month of twenty four hour, seven days a week cramming before my exams worked and I passed eight of them. This surprised everyone, especially my teachers and parents and led to my receiving an award at my schools prize giving ceremony. This could have been a bit ambiguous as it was an award for the most improved student, which I believe most people took to mean the award for the student least likely to succeed. However, I carried my book token around with the reverence attributed to an Olympian’s gold medal.  

My parents, believing that I had turned the corner, offered me a carrot that no one could refuse. If I carried on into the sixth form and did reasonably well in my ‘A’ levels, they would sponsor my pilot training. At least their expectations were being set at a realistic level and I needed no bigger incentive.

My Mum and Dad decided to see if I would enjoy flying, so they kindly set me up with a trial flight out of a small airfield west of London at Booker, which at the time was home to the airplanes from the film, “Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines”. I was to fly with the son of a friend of my Dad’s. The flight was to be on a small single engine Piper aircraft belonging to the British Airways Flying Club. The aircraft was even painted in the British Airways colour scheme! I was amazed when told the reason for flying from here was because my instructor was a chap called Jock Lowe, a British Airways Concorde pilot, and future Flight Operations Director of the company. You could say I was suitably impressed! My Dad certainly did not do anything by halves!  

The flight was everything I thought it would be, the take off from the grassy airfield made all the more special as I was allowed to do it myself, and on my first ever flight! I was shown what to do; how to make the aircraft go up and down and turn. Heading south, I could see London’s Heathrow airport in the distance ahead of us, a Boeing 747 Jumbo jet climbing out on some unknown but soon to be faraway journey. This was what I wanted to do and from then on the only thing I wanted to do. My time airborne with Jock seemed to disappear in an instant. In no time at all I found myself coming in for landing and this part of my adventure was over. The next day I would be back at school grappling with logarithms and football whilst my instructor would be piloting a Concorde to Singapore. This was a concept so farfetched in my young eyes that I could barely grasp it. 

I was now one hundred percent bitten by the bug and decided that somehow I would try and complete my Private Pilots Licence whilst at school. This meant that some evenings I would be working as a barman in my local pub and on Saturdays as the man in the booth at our local multi-storey car park collecting payment from the drivers. I came to hate the phrase ‘tickets please’ with a vengeance! But this work allowed me to save enough money to accumulate the flying hours and learn the basic skills which would eventually lead me to my first pilots licence, though gaining the final certificate was some way off. I had so much to learn whilst I slowly logged the hours to achieve the minimum magic number of forty five; the minimum required by the authorities before giving me permission to terrorise pigeons and my future passengers.  Only then would I be granted a Private Pilots Licence or PPL as it is more commonly known.   

Amongst the multitude of subjects that I had to cover, both in the air and on the ground, I would be required to learn how to take-off and land, basic aerobatics, the correct way to speak on the radio and aviation rules and regulations. It was also important to be fully trained in what to do in an emergency; “Inshallah” would not work for me! But a scenario which would arise in the then not so distant future.  

I would also need to learn how to navigate using a map to help in distinguishing the landmarks around me, there being no signposts at two thousand feet above the ground and extremely difficult to stop and ask for directions, especially for a man! Though this did not stop me from getting lost on several embarassing occasions during cross country exercises! Most importantly, I would need to learn what to do if my engine or engines failed, which they did on more than one occasion and at the most inconvenient time, but more on that later.

Being only able to pay for a one hour flying lesson every fortnight, initially at a flying club called Kingair at Biggin Hill and then at the Biggin Hill School of Flying, meant it was slow work achieving my goal, but great fun. The chief flying instructor, a kind hearted moustachioed character noticed my enthusiasm for all things to do with both the club and aviation, offered me a part time job, which was perfect as it allowed me to quit my high powered job as a car park attendant! I had had my fill of glue sniffers who were convinced that they could undertake their own flying lessons, leaping from the roof like lemmings and without the aid of any winged device I might add. 

So I jumped (but not like the glue sniffers), at the opportunity of spending my Saturdays as general gopher and dogsbody at my flying club, cutting the grass, painting and cleaning out the aircraft. It was a feeling of belonging to the aviation community and whilst I did not realise it at the time, the first step in the quest of my dream.

It may have taken almost six months but that just goes to show my perseverence, so you can imagine that I was chuffed to bits as I achieved my first goal - going solo by my seventeenth birthday, a flight which like other ‘firsts’ I will never forget. On this day my instructor never told me that I was to go solo. I realised afterwards that this was so as not to make me nervous. After a quick couple of circuits where I once again practiced my take-offs and landings, he instructed me to pull over onto a taxiway and with the minimum of fuss left me to it and, more importantly, left me alone.  

Now I remember very little about the intricacies of the next twenty minutes, the procedures and the checklists, only the euphoria once it was over. The adrenalin which flowed through me and the excitement I felt was as if I had personally piloted that Concorde to Singapore and not just flown two square circuits around a small Kent airfield. Fortunately my Dad once again saved the day as he had filmed it using his super 8 video camera, and I could relive the experience as many times as I wanted. Well, I could many years later when it had been converted to DVD! 

After that fabulous day I continued my stop-start flying training, however, there was one small downside as I was unable to finish my PPL before leaving school because I did not have the resources and ran out of time, especially as I had to study for my now ever so important ‘A’ level exams.  

Looking back, maybe I tried to juggle too many balls as I was always busy, trying to fit too many things into too short a time; studying, girls, flying, girls, working and finally girls! All whilst trying to be a model student at school which we all knew was never going to happen! My teachers never knew I was training to be a pilot whilst studying at school and to be honest, I don’t think they would have believed me if I had told them!

The final twist in the tale of my school experience led to me being suspended on the last day of term for some overly enthusiastic celebrations. My friends often ‘borrowed’ my car, an antiquated but much loved Ford Anglia, as it could be started with their school locker key!   

Much to my amusement, I would frequently watch the car disappear out of the school gates without my being asked and often without being invited! To celebrate the last day of term, I volunteered to drive a group of friends to the pub at lunchtime! On our return there were seven of us crammed into my tiny car, six drunk and three still smoking. Being slightly late, I decided to test my road rally skills. This involved overtaking what turned out to be an unmarked police car on the inside, a manoeuvre which allowed me to swerve into the school car park. With the yelling, screaming and ‘words’ of encouragement from my friends, I was convinced that my Ford Anglia had the performance of an F1 car which in hindsight was akin to entering a poodle, complete with jockey into the Grand National. 

Ten minutes later I was sitting in my usual seat outside the headmasters study, waiting to be summoned for what I considered to be the coup-de-grace. The door opened and I was called in. For some reason then unknown to me, I was shown mercy. The headmaster had spoken to my father and as it was the last day of term I was to be just suspended. This meant that I would be able to finish my studies. I know I was lucky at just a suspension - I mean they could have taken my book token away!  

Before I returned for my final term, my Dad said something strange to me. 

 “Be careful driving over those speed bumps when you go back to school!”  

How was he to know? Did he visit my school during the holidays because this was news to me? Unbeknownst to me, during the holiday period the school had commissioned speed bumps built along the drive into the school car park. This was the deal brokered for my suspension and not expulsion! My long suffering parents had come to my rescue again and put this latest escapade down to youthful exuberance. 

In the years to come they would rescue me more often than an RNLI crew in the North Sea, a fact which I am always eternally grateful for….

At the start of my final term I knuckled down in earnest. This implied studying as hard as I could, but in reality as hard as I deemed it was absolutely necessary to prepare myself for my upcoming exams. This meant that in my physics classes I basically copied everything Nick my lab partner did. This did not quite work as well as I hoped, for whilst Nick is now a highly respected Professor of Neurosurgery, I obtained a less distinguished grade E. Today this would not be described as a fail grade, but simply that I had deferred my success.

My second ‘A’ level, General Studies, was an exam which was almost impossible to fail, mainly because the teachers had no idea what to teach. For two hours on a Tuesday and a Thursday afternoon, half a dozen of us could be found in the groundsman’s house drinking beer and smoking whilst watching videos with his wife. Thinking back it could have been worse; they could have been videos of his wife! This was like our secret club, not quite along the lines of “The Dead Poets Society”, but it did release us for a short period of time from the stress of our impending final exams, made us feel that little bit rebellious, if only for a couple of hours. 

I strangely managed to obtain a grade B in this subject which goes someway to pointing out how ridiculous this particular subject was, seeing as I cannot remember a thing about it. I suppose it was basically a “filler” in the exam system, similar to lettuce in a prawn cocktail, there to bolster the exam success rates and the perception of improvement in an underachieving schools’ performance. 

Now maths was a subject that I enjoyed but more importantly, slightly understood. I used to set about calculus and integration with an enthusiasm not unlike one of the spotty anorak bedecked oiks you could find on a platform at Clapham Junction when the new railway timetable was published. This led to a grade C and a triumph of perseverance over ability. 

It was geography where I turned it around, and realised that fluent waffle and highly complex and often absurdly incorrect technical illustrations would suffice to obtain a stunning grade B pass. So there I was with three ‘A’ level passes and I had the certificates to prove it. 

By now you have probably come to the same conclusion, that all in all, I was very lucky as a teenager.  Not only did my parents promise to sponsor my flight training, but they were also the reason for my having the travel bug planted in me. 

My family would take fabulous vacations during the school holidays and they would take me along too, regardless of how many animals I had liberated from the school’s euthanasia programme or holes I had blown in walls.  

Fortunately my experiment of brewing beer in one of our student lockers could not be directly attributed to me; my cunning idea to place the largest of the fermenting buckets in my buddy’s locker, who was sick in hospital at the time, had been a masterstroke. After one hot weekend and too much sugar, the frothy congealing liquid had oozed out and spread over the floor of the main hallway, giving the game away!  

Otherwise, once again after my parents had received their almost monthly newsletter from my Headmaster, our forthcoming trip to Los Angeles would have probably been in jeopardy! Our adventures as a family would cause us to visit many other places, ones as diverse as Lichtenstein, Hawaii, cruise around the Caribbean or head off on African safaris. Destinations which were both considered extreme and exotic some thirty years ago. 

Despite my schoolboy pranks, which were the cause of my parents’ worry and numerous reprimands, I found myself driving up to Oxfordshire to enrol at the UK’s premier flight school; CSE Aviation in Kidlington to commence my commercial flight training.

The real fun and my life was about to begin!  

I was one seriously lucky young man and to this day I can never thank my often despairing parents enough……..

 

 

 

NOT EVERY DAY CAN BE PERFECT!!!!

No technical jargon or aviation procedures required. No names mentioned, just a big question. Why?

The following is about my  annual line check whilst flying for an Italian company some years ago. It was actually my check after initial company line training, and the primary reason why I decided to leave.

After about four weeks of line training I was finally scheduled for my line check. A check which every pilot has to undergo when joining a new company, well your name could be Frank Abagnale!
I was rostered to operate a four sector day from Milan to Ibiza, returning to Bergamo, before flying back to Ibiza and then home to Milan. Tiring enough without having your every action scrutinised by a training captain.

So I arrived at the briefing office nice and early at Milan’s Malpensa airport’s terminal two, to give myself enough time to go through the pre-flight paperwork and meet the rest of the crew. I was paired up with a co-pilot whom I had not flown with before, but had met around the office, a very nice and helpful chap. That was the good news; my training captain was infamous in the company for being a bully and difficult to work with. However, I had not met him before and was willing to make my own mind up and form my own opinions.

The briefing office was not huge, just big enough to contain one round table with space for five chairs, and a larger rectangular table, along with filing cabinets and pilots’ mailboxes. I sat down at the round table with my co-pilot and we started working through the paperwork, flight plans, weather, route information &c.

The storm was about to start, in walked my training captain, he looked at me and asked, “Why are you sitting there, come on the other tables better!” he tutted, shaking his head and started talking rudely in Italian to my co-pilot.

Great start I thought, I just stood up and offered my hand, and I suppose sarcastically opined, “By the way my name is Alan!”

Nothing I could do was right, and when he asked how much fuel I wanted to take for the first sector which was a tanking sector, he countered my suggestion. “No, come on you’re a professional, look we can expect up to twenty children, that’s at least another ton you can take.”

“Yes, but if this number of children is wrong, then we’ll be overweight for landing!” I replied. I was amazed at his reply, “So what we’ll just change the zero fuel weight in the FMC.” Incredible attitude I thought!

So pre-flight duties completed we met up with the rest of the crew, and headed off to the aircraft, you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife, my crew for today were literally in fear of this man, not good.

Anyway out at the aircraft the atmosphere just got worse. Going through my pre-departure procedures, this bully shouted at my co-pilot and I to hurry up because if we missed our slot I could pick up my bag and leave as I would be fired…his exact words. I replied. “What slot, no one has told me that we had a slot?”

“I know, so you should too,” was his answer, he had been told but decided not to pass on this information, great I thought, what ever happened to teamwork.

He started yelling at my co-pilot to ask for pushback clearance, I advised him that we were not ready, but he wouldn’t listen and started shouting in Italian at my co-pilot.

Pushback clearance was obtained and I hastily configured the aircraft and we pushed back without the necessary checklists being completed. By now I had had enough, and was planning my letter of resignation. During taxi out to the runway, all I could hear from this idiot behind me was come on hurry up, followed by more tutting and sighing.

Well, we made our slot and took off, once level in the cruise I handed over control to my co-pilot and took off my headset, and turned around to speak to this so called training captain that was sitting on the jump seat behind me.

“I have been flying for twenty five years, and deserve a bit more respect than what you are showing me. On our return to Milan I will decide if I am going to work for this company…..not you!” With that he shut up a bit, well until our approach into Ibiza anyway.

On final approach into Ibiza he said “You better do a smooth landing we carry people not animals.”

There was venom in his voice and attitude; fortunately my landing met his ‘high’ standards!

The next two sectors were to be flown by my co-pilot, but he was so nervous with being constantly bullied, that he screwed both landings up to the extent that I had to take over control and salvage the landings. His answer was “Good, this company can’t afford go-arounds”, a frightening concept to drill into pilots, and one that I considered wholly unacceptable.

On taxi out at Bergamo we were behind a Flightline Bae146, who my ‘training’ captain considered to be taxiing too slowly, “I hope he has an engine failure on take-off”, he shouted out…crazy, crazy, crazy attitude I thought. Do you know what, as this aircraft started its take-off roll, there was a large puff of smoke from one of its engines, and they rejected the take-off. This was met with the same glee from him as a cup final goal being scored in the 90th minute!

Well, I survived the day, but he never told me if I’d passed. This bully realised that I would not cowtie to him, and all he said was “Today I just wanted to see how much pressure I could put you under, and you did OK.”

****** I thought and flew home that evening to London. I telephoned my agent, and explained that I was considering resigning, but was talked out of it, as it was explained that I only had to fly with this guy once a year!

I have to admit it took me almost a week to calm down, and I am not exaggerating.

As a post note, we never exchanged Christmas cards!!!!!!

THIS WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED SOME YEARS AGO ON MY FACEBOOK PAGE....IT WAS READ AT THE FUNERAL OF MY OLD CHIEF PILOT AND IS STILL VERY APT......

I hope there's a place, way up in the sky.
Where pilots can go, when they have to die.
A place where a chap can have a cold beer.
With a friend or a comrade whose memory is clear.
A place with good graces, no hook or slice.
While all landings are smooth and you never bounce twice.
Just a quaint little bar for a chat and a smoke.
Where they like to sing loud, and love a good joke.
The kind of a place where a lady could go.
Feel safe and protected by the men she would know.

There must be a place where old pilots go.
Where their plans are all finished and their airspeed gets low.
Where the whisky is old, and the women are young.
And songs about flying and dying are sung.
Where you'd see all the fellows you'd flown with before.
Who would call you your name, as you come through the door.
Who would buy you a drink, if your thirst should be bad.
And say to the others, "He was quite a good lad!"

And then, through the crowd, you'd spot an old guy.
You had not seen in years, though he'd taught you to fly.
He'd nod his wise head, and grin ear to ear.
And say, "Welcome, my Son I'm pleased you are here!"
For this is the place where true flyers come.
When their journey is over, and their life is all done.
They come here at last so far up above.
To be close to their pals and to those whom they love.
Where all hours are happy and old boys can rest.
This is heaven my son, you have passed your last test.


A wee bit sad, but happy too.....

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A HAJJ PILOT PART 1

THIS WAS ORIGINALLY PART 1 OF AN ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN AIRLINER WORLD MAGAZINE.

 

 

Briefly, an explanation is needed; the Hajj is a five day annual pilgrimage made by those of the Islamic faith to their holiest site, Mecca in Saudi Arabia; this is often combined with a less important stopover at the second most holiest city Medina, around 250 miles to the north of Jeddah. As a Hajj pilot based in the Middle East you would very quickly become very familiar with these two airports.

This was to be my second Hajj operation; two years ago I flew the Boeing 737-800 for NEOS, an Italian airline based in Milan, whilst subcontracted to Nasair in Eritrea. Great fun, but this year would be totally different. I would be based in Baghdad and flying the Boeing 747-400 on behalf of the Hajj Commission under Iraqi Airways AOC. Operating to Madinah, Jeddah, Basra, Erbil and Sulaimaniyah life as a contract pilot is seldom dull!

During the period which the Hajj operates, the role of the airline pilot is to primarily transport these pilgrims from cities all over the world to Jeddah, this being the nearest airport to Mecca, and site of the incredible Hajj terminal.

 

JEDDAH’S SPECTACULAR HAJJ TERMINAL

And secondly to the city of Medina which has, literally, as its centre-point the ‘first’ Mosque.

However, the role of the Hajj pilot involves operating in an environment which to most commercial pilots would be completely alien, especially when operating out of Iraq to-boot! Hopefully the following will highlight this ‘unusual’ operation.

Our hotel in Baghdad, though not in the protected ‘green Zone’ is nevertheless in a ‘secure’ enough area, being protected by three security rings which surround the Baghdad International Airport, formerly Saddam International Airport. Hints to this dictator’s past can still be found.

 

REMNANTS FROM THE PAST CAN STILL BE FOUND

Our final line of defence is provided by a private security company which posts guards armed with their AK47s at the entrance and around the hotel’s periphery, as well as a multitude of closed circuit television cameras. Although this did not stop the American forces ‘raiding’ the hotel recently, ordering everyone out of their rooms at gunpoint as they believed that two al-Qaeda operatives had infiltrated the guests.

Also, there are the occasional mortar and rocket attacks where the insurgents’ fire in our general direction, primarily aiming for the large American airbase attached to the airport and their ‘Camp Victory’ facilities. One such attack took place just a couple of nights ago with the impacts occurring at ‘French Village’ located just over a mile from our hotel. The resulting explosions shook the hotel, which is why our beds are not flush with the walls, in-case anything becomes dislodged then this will not fall on our heads whilst sleeping!

Today’s flight is scheduled to depart at 0200 local time, however, as a crew we know that this will never depart on time; making our schedule of Baghdad-Medina-Baghdad a long day out indeed. Even though we will only be flying short sectors, with none of them more than two and a quarter hours each, however, it is what happens on the ground before departure and during the turn-around which takes up most of the duty day.

So with our crew assembled, comprising twelve cabin crew (the minimum legally required to operate our fully laden Boeing 747-400), one ground engineer who flies with us plus myself and my co-pilot we depart our hotel in its rickety old shuttle bus for the airport and the first of many security checks.

Our Iraq Airways identity cards are checked prior to entering the airport’s terminal area at its last roadside checkpoint and then after disembarking from the bus we are instructed to line all our crew bags up where the ‘K9’, the sniffer dog, checks them for explosives. We are given a cursory hand search, men in the open, women in a curtained off booth. With these checks completed, we are allowed to enter the airport terminal building itself, after our bags have been x-rayed and we’ve passed through a normal airport body scanner.

Time for the crew to split up with the pilots heading off to the Iraq Airways flight operations to collect the flight plans, weather and notams, our purser accompanies us to collect the General Declaration. This document allows us to retrieve our passports which are held by the airport’s immigration officers during our layover in Baghdad.  With the paperwork completed we repeat the x-ray and body search processes three more times before being allowed on-board our white tailed Boeing 747-400. As of yet the airline’s colour scheme has yet to be painted onto the fuselage, its registration YI-AQQ, an ex-JAL aircraft with a 420 seat configuration, 70 business and 350 economy towers over the other aircraft on the airport’s apron.

 

MY FABULOUS, YET TO BE PAINTED ‘TOY’ ON THE MEDINA RAMP

Once on-board one of the aspects of this type of operation which I relish is that the crew has to do everything, chase everything and organise everything, just to keep it all going. Our South African ground engineer not only completes his transit checks and refuelling of the aircraft, but also ensures that the baggage pallets have been loaded where we want them to be and that the cargo hold locks have been activated correctly. With the fuel we tend to uplift as much from Baghdad as we can, where it is six times cheaper than in Saudi Arabia. So 130,000 pounds has become our standard fuel figure departing Baghdad, which is sufficient to fly to either Jeddah or Medina and then still have sufficient remaining for the return sector to Baghdad, with full reserves and ‘some for mum’.

Our aircraft is in excellent condition and has been extremely well maintained but even so, as in any airline faults occur and at the moment our APU is not working, whilst we are currently waiting for a new starter to arrive. This condition throws up more operational considerations, as we need ground electrics as well as ground air carts for engine starting. We also need ground air conditioning units as even at this time of the morning the aircraft interior heats up rapidly during passenger boarding.

On-board our cabin crew have to complete their own security checks, liaising with me for a check of the PA and cabin evacuation systems, whilst also ensuring the aircraft is clean, the water and toilet systems have been correctly serviced and that we have sufficient catering on-board.

In the cockpit whilst managing the overall operation we have our own tasks to complete, such as completing the initial cockpit set-up where we ensure that all the switches are correctly set, loading the FMS (Flight Management System) with route, navigation and performance information for this flight, so this is literally both the heart and brains of the operation. We also have to complete the load-sheet in triplicate and the trim sheet too, this will confirm that the aircraft is correctly loaded and within all structural limits. Not such a big deal for us, because even with a full load and tankering fuel, we are still comparatively light for a Boeing 747-400 on take-off, around 650,000 pounds, compared with our maximum allowed take-off weight of 830,000 pounds. 

 

OUR COCKPIT WAITING TO BE POWERED UP

You have to keep on top of what is going on, or more often, not going on and realising that we were still not boarding passengers, it is up to us to find out why. So leaving the cosy environs of the cockpit I ascertain from our ramp agent that our passengers would not be boarding for another three hours as they had been held up by enhanced security checks entering the airport as a result of the multitude of bombs which exploded in downtown Baghdad this evening. The Hajj operation generally is a case of ‘Hurry Up And Wait’ and operating out of Iraq just exacerbates the situation.

Well eventually, with dawn threatening to rise and our 0200 departure time nearly 3 hours behind us, passenger boarding is finally completed. As I will be PF (Pilot Flying) down to Medina, I complete a departure and emergency briefing, covering discussion items relating to what will happen and what we hope will not.

With the calculated zero fuel weight (the weight of the aircraft, passengers and baggage) entered into the FMS we check our performance charts to see what power setting can be used. At this weight we can use a maximum de-rate, by using an assumed temperature of 55 degrees, this allows us to reduce the wear and stress on the engines and so prolong their life. We use the speeds calculated now by the FMS for take-off, V1 (decision speed in event of a critical malfunction occurring during take-off, defined as the maximum speed at which the initial actions to reject the take-off must be commenced.  Vr (the speed at which we rotate, initiate the actions required to become airborne) and V2 (the engine out target speed). Checking that both the V1 speed is annunciated on the PFD (Primary Flight Display) as well as the V2 speed also, once we’ve manually set it on the speed selector window of the MCP (Mode Control Panel).

With the pre-flight and before start checklists completed, it is time to review the supplementary procedures as the APU is inoperative for starting the first engine whilst parked on the gate using an external air supply. We need to start engine number four first then disconnect the ground services before pushing back. Then once the pushback is completed we can use the cross-bleed start checklist for the remaining three engines. This involves increasing thrust on the operating engine so that there is sufficient bleed air to start the remaining engines.

We have now been on duty nearly six hours and only just reached a position where we can call ATC for taxi clearance. Completing our pre taxi procedures requires selecting the flaps to twenty degrees and checking the full and free movement of the control surfaces against their display on the status page of the lower EICAS (Engine Indicating Crew Alert System). Finally, we complete the after start checklist, and we can depart under our own power.

Baghdad ground control issues us with our transponder code and clears us to taxi to the holding point of runway 33 Right via taxiways Yankee and Sierra. Now these are not denoted on the Jeppesen taxi charts, but having operated out of Baghdad now for the last couple of months we know the routing.

There is no need to increase engine thrust as we are so overpowered at this light weight that simply releasing the parking brake causes the aircraft to start moving, this brings its own concerns as we have to be careful with the brakes, not ride them and cause them to unnecessarily heat up. Tyres need to be nursed as well watching for a maximum speed of ten knots in turns and thirty knots in a straight line before slowing back down again. As with preserving the engines we need to also minimise the wear on the tyres and brakes due to the difficulty in getting spares and maintenance with the resultant high costs in this part of the world.

Having been advised by our purser that the cabin is ready for take-off we complete the before take-off checklist, being advised by ground control to change frequency over to Baghdad tower, we await our departure instructions

Looking over to my left, I can see to the south east of the airport the silhouette of one of Saddam’s palaces, a monstrosity surrounded by ornate lagoons and villas. Approaching the holding point at the runway’s threshold, I slow the aircraft down, anticipating that there will be no delay to our departure, just our ATC clearance to come.

 

SADDAM’S PALACES, VILLAS AND LAGOONS……

Although there are SIDs (Standard Instrument Departures) prescribed for Baghdad airport, for obvious reasons it is best not to fly routes which can be planned for in advance and monitored by third parties who might have criminal intentions. Therefore just prior to take-off we are given a heading to fly after departure and clearance to climb to five thousand feet. The heading takes us away from the city and out over the desert and relative safety. The memories of what happened to the DHL Airbus A300 are always there, made more poignant as it is parked less than two hundred yards from the hotel we stay in here!

 

THE DHL AIRBUS A 300, SO EXPERTLY BROUGHT BACK DOWN TO EARTH

With the cabin crew notified over the PA system of our impending take-off I review our immediate actions when airborne. With the undercarriage selected up I remind us that all exterior lights are to be switched off to, the cabin crew have already been briefed to switch off all their cabin lights.

It’s very ghostly here as at night on the ground in Baghdad you can hear many aircraft and helicopters flying around, but it is impossible to see any of them, as nobody flies around with lights on here, again for obvious reasons.

With take –off clearance received and lined up on the runway’s centreline I advance the four thrust levers to 70%N1 and check for stable power indications before depressing the TOGA (Take Off Go Around) switches. Now the auto-throttle system automatically advances the thrust levers to our previously selected power setting, and our take-off roll commences.

With a call of ’80 knots’ to cross check airspeed indications and that neither pilot is incapacitated, we quickly accelerate to V1 and shortly after Vr. Initially climbing away at 165 knots and with a positive rate of climb confirmed, I ask for ‘gear up and lights off’. At four hundred feet above the ground I ask for the Heading mode to be selected to correctly direct the flight directors and following its commands bank the aircraft in the required direction to pick up our previously cleared heading.

INITIAL CLIMB FROM BAGHDAD, LOOKING AT THE AIRPORT’S CIVIL TERMINAL

Now flying outside the relative safety of the airport’s perimeter, we head south west and out over the desert. Our ND (Navigation Display) portraying many TCAS (Traffic Collision Alerting System) targets; helicopters, UAVs (Unmanned Air Vehicles) and other random military traffic with fabulously imaginative call-signs. However, we were being expertly and assuredly looked after by the American Air Traffic Controllers and our day out was about to begin in earnest.

 

ONE DAY, IN AND OUT OF AFRICA!

Okay, doom and gloom first, best get it out of the way now. In the current economic climate, to be honest there are few options for those pilots who are looking for their next, or maybe their first job. Unless of course you fancy working in West Africa, China, or even worse than Lagos or Shenzhen, Ryan-land!

The days of becoming a Hamster (BEA and junior BOAC pilots know what I mean) or a re-born Virgin are long behind us and for most, dipping their toes into the world of contract flying could be the only way of securing employment. Even these two ‘legacy’ carriers that I’ve just mentioned are amongst dozens of others which are looking at reducing the number of personnel in their flight ops departments. But don’t be scared about contracting, having experienced career airlines such as Dan Air, Virgin Atlantic and Thomsonfly, I thoroughly recommend it.

Okay the financial security is not there, but where is it anywhere at the moment? This was personally brought home to me by watching two of my previous airlines’ pensions shrivelling up; one alone lost 22% in the last year, unfortunately not the ex-wife’s 22%!

But, if you’re willing to consider a 12 month contract to just tide you over in the short term, then believe it or not there is still a lot of choice out there in the job market, although to be honest the options as I previously intimated are generally in the less salubrious areas of the world. Which in my own opinion is what makes them more interesting, especially places like Seoul, Bucharest, Casablanca and Asmara?

Okay our industry is in a downturn, but those of us who have been around the block more often than one of Blakey’s buses knows that this is cyclical. (By the way, one of my co-pilots in Virgin Atlantic actually appeared in one of the ‘On The Buses’ films. Don’t worry, I won’t embarrass you any further Andy!) Well, over my last twenty five years in this industry I’ve seen it before, and the good times will return; it may just take a bit longer this time.

So to explain where I am going with this, I have recently returned from enjoying my latest experience, adventure as my long suffering wife calls it, and the following ‘story’ highlights just one of those days, those long, long days! I say long day as I should have learnt from my brief time flying the DC10 for a Zimbabwe registered freight company, that ‘Flight Time Limitations’ in Africa were looked at as merely a daft suggestion than a rule. Therefore the day out which I shall shortly explain would never happen to, nor be tolerated by say, a British Airways pilot, and quite rightly so! But then it’s one of the ‘perks’ of being a pilot in the up and down world of contract flying. You need to manage the situation yourself and the need for flexibility and understanding of your environment is paramount to keeping the operation going whilst never forgetting, always being safe. Bizarrely, do you know what though; I wouldn’t swap this topsy-turvy lifestyle for all the weeks on the beach in the Caribbean, or weekends shopping in New York! Twelve years falling over in the same Irish bar in Miami, and delving through the bargain basement in Macy’s in Manhattan, whilst Delsey dining (eating out of, and on your suitcase) in my dolls house sized room in Narita outside of Tokyo, was enough thanks!

Well, this latest adventure was to be a new one on me, as after operating from more than 200 different airports on five continents; I still had to look up the place that I was being sent to in my nine year old daughter’s atlas. You see, whilst being employed by a UK aircrew agency Avcom, though my contract was ‘conveniently’ registered in the Cayman Islands and subcontracted out by them to a small Italian airline Neos, which was based at Milan’s Malpensa airport; I was sent on a detachment for a relatively new Eritrean airline Nasair, by the way that’s in Africa, but you probably guessed that from the title of this piece! I think my lawyer would have fun tracing back any liability issues!

For the spotters I’ve probably added two new airlines to their hit lists, as I too had never heard of either airline until I’d become directly involved with them. Briefly a little bit of history to appease the various marketing departments. Neos, initially partly owned by TUI, started operations in 2002 with a single B737-800W whilst Nasair commenced flight operations in December 2006 initially with a not so new B737-200. Back to Neos briefly, even though the company was from a ‘civilized’ European country, their training department and method of operating the B737NG came as quite a culture shock, but there in lies a tale for another time!

So back to now, there were seven of us in all on my crew, five flight attendants and two pilots. We were to be based for around two weeks in Asmara the country’s capital. I say around two weeks as we could not be guaranteed that Nasair would release us on the day that our parent company had scheduled us to return, there were always ‘problems’ with the tickets, in other words no one wanted to pay for them! As we were on a wet lease fortunately we would be operating one of Neos’s own aircraft, I-NEOW a B-737-800W, by the way the ‘W’ stands for Winglet, and Neos were very proud of that ‘W’! Big picture, little picture!

Now I’m no stranger to Africa but early impressions, infact it only took five minutes to be exact after disembarking from the Yemeni airlines A310, the one which is sadly now at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, and walking across the unlit ramp to the overcrowded and steaming arrivals hall, for my suspicions to be confirmed. We had been travelling for the whole day from Milan via Rome to Sana’a in the Yemen then onwards to Asmara. Flying on a B737, A330 and an A310, all of which were dry! The brightly lit hall left a fair amount to be desired, infact appeared to leave a fair amount to still be built. It was going to be proven that I’d definitely stayed in more cosmopolitan cities for sure, even in Africa. Especially as a couple of days later it seemed that we’d exhausted all of the local tourist attractions after visiting the heavily guarded tank graveyard, three octogenarians with locally issued sticks, and the 1950’s bowling alley! By the way the bowling alley had no means of automatically picking up the pins after they’d been knocked down, so you were allocated a young local lad who hid behind the pins to do this for you. This after several beers created a whole new sport!

My crew on this detachment consisted of a real character and all round nice guy in Leonardo my co-pilot and the five fabulous cabin crew led by the senior cabin crew member Ermelinda. After completing all of the airport’s arrival procedures, in triplicate, we shoehorned ourselves and our luggage into the dusty hot Nasair minibus for the short drive to our hotel. Once again using just first impressions to go on, I was preparing for a bit of a disappointment. We pulled up in front of the most decrepit looking hotel I’ve been forced to stay in, and I’ve stayed in Tashkent, Lagos and Hull! I think that we all shared the same opinion that this was to be no luxury holiday! As an aside I was later to find out that we had been ‘upgraded’, even though I had no hot water for two days at least I had water, the previous crew had had no water at all in their hotel/bordello.

Back to why we were here, good news, we were escaping from Asmara, if only for fourteen hours or so as we were scheduled to operate a Hajj flight for Nasair. This meant us operating a sixty minute ferry flight from Asmara to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, load up with an assortment of returning pilgrims, and fly them back to their ‘homes’ around N’djamena in Chad, before another ferry flight back to Asmara. Nice day out I thought, well I’d never done a Hajj contract before, and three new airports to operate from, boy were my eyes about to be opened!

Our day started with the same battered old company minibus from a few days prior, picking us up at the crack of dawn from our hotel, the temperature outside was only just above freezing as even though Asmara is in East Africa; its elevation is almost 8,000 feet above mean sea level, the cold and thin air not helping the smokers amongst the crew! The drive to the airport only took fifteen minutes along the dusty potholed roads, past the UN complex, dodging the early morning traffic of goats and wobbly cyclists!    

On reaching the airport we passed through what amounted to a ‘gesture’ towards security, I swear the screening machines were probably not plugged in! On the surface though, I must say that their system appeared much better than the shed and clipboard operation of the Lagos airport freight ramp. Heading off in search of the Nasair briefing office, we were fortunate that Leonardo knew the way as he was on his second detachment here, it was located in the main airport’s terminal building and there were no signposts obviously. Neos operations were ahead of the game as they had already faxed through the flight-plans, which is a task that could take more than thirty minutes on the archaic equipment available, no laser printers here! The duty manager or ramp agent, I never did find out his exact title or unfortunately his name had arranged for what he considered to be a selection of ‘suitable’ weather reports to be printed off. However, there were no Notams for either Asmara or N’djamena though; two out of three of our destinations, and my polite insistence over my need for these were met with a smile and a promise that I would have them prior to departure! I was not totally convinced. A lot of people just shrug their shoulders and play the joker card, well this is Africa, but this was one joker that I wanted to keep up my sleeve for when I felt that I really needed it!

However, our first and most important job on being presented with the wad of paperwork was to complete the government currency declaration forms, with to us their obvious flaw, I could tell you why but I won’t! Next task was to make a decision on the fuel which we required to have on board to fly the one hour sector to Jeddah, very simple this last one. In Asmara there’s no JET A1 fuel available to us, even though there’s a fuel farm located on the airport. I should imagine this is reserved for the mighty Eritrean air force, which in Asmara comprised one modern looking Mig 29 fighter, no photos were to be taken we were told, but if you’re interested you can see it on Google Earth! As well as a selection of ‘distressed’ training aircraft, including I believe an old T33. As a result of this fuel situation we always had to plan to arrive into Asmara with at least eight tons of fuel remaining onboard, enough to get back out again and fly to either Khartoum or Jeddah.

So pre-flight briefing complete, especially as Leonardo had already prepared as far as he could manual loadsheets and ATC flight plans whilst in the hotel, such was his efficiency and professionalism which I was to find would be echoed frequently over the next week or so. It was again time for another foray for us through one more ‘security’ checkpoint, after which we were allowed to stroll out to our aircraft. Health and safety nitwits would be jumping up and down at this, as there was not a high-viz jacket in sight! Well, to be honest the only thing moving on the ramp were the two birds which our engineer had  flushed out of the APU exhaust on our aircraft, and also now that the sun had risen we were lucky as the temperature was starting to do so also. As mentioned the apron was not exactly a bustle of activity, there were only three other aircraft, two of which were Nasair B737-200 aircraft being tended to by a couple of scruffy Russian engineers. I’ll add here, that a couple of days later when we had to return to the airport to put our aircraft to bed and complete the mid term parking procedure, you see it was to be staying on the ground for a while, these two characters waved us onboard the most knackered looking of these two aircraft. Wanting to know, by just using hand signals but we got the gist, if we could assist them with some urgent engineering. Which unfortunately we couldn’t, but on our way out through the ‘business class’ section being nosy we peered into the flight deck, where I was surprised to see that on the glareshield they had wired up the same type of Tom-Tom satnav that you could buy back home in Halfords!

The only other airworthy looking aircraft on the ramp was an Eritrean airline’s B767, which not surprisingly also appeared to have seen better days. In comparison our shiny and spotless looking aircraft was a pearl cast amongst swine, parked as it was in the cheap seats as far from the airport terminal as was physically possible. The aircraft was one which Neos had picked up from the unfortunate demise of Excel Airways in the UK and now placed on the Italian register, and having been repainted, in what are basically TUI colours but with the NASAIR logo on the side of the fuselage, and I must say looked very smart.

Our ground engineer, a great chap called Rory who was a Dutchman from Nairobi but married to an Eritrean lass, was sat in the forward left doorway of our aircraft, his legs casually dangling over the side as he wrote up the daily check in the technical log, a set of insubstantial and wobbly step ladders reaching only halfway up to this open doorway not a site that I’d ever witnessed at London Heathrow! Now I could not imagine the female cabin crew with their high heels, climbing up this ladder and pulling themselves up the final three feet to board the aircraft. But this was what our still smiling ramp agent insisted that we needed to do, the reason being that Nasair had not paid their last bill to the airport authorities, so in return we were to receive no assistance with ground operations! I could see Rory looking down at us as we approached grinning away, and I could visualise him mouthing, ‘welcome to Africa!’

Once I had diplomatically persuaded our ramp agent, and that he realised that this flight was not departing using a step ladder, he sprung, sorry loped into action. Fifteen minutes later a knackered looking tractor fired up and spewing blue and black smoke pulled an equally looking knackered set of steps towards us, five minutes of comic too and frowing and the steps were sort of in position.

Leonardo busied himself with the pre-departure safety check and the preliminary flight deck inspection, the APU was already running and thanks to Rory’s previous efforts there was no smell of roasting ‘poultry’! I was pleased to note that the flight deck was actually at quite a pleasant temperature as I stood behind Leonardo in the cramped confines of the B737 cockpit. I checked over the technical log, which Rory had finished, ‘Good’ no defects carried forward. There very rarely were on Neos aircraft I found, as they were kept in excellent condition and maintained to the high requirements befitting an ETOPS operation, and the daily check was now up to date. There was still the same amount of fuel onboard as the aircraft had arrived with, a strange comment you might think, but only if you were not used to African operations. I shall explain why it was unusual for Africa, as last year whilst flying the DC10-30F in and out of Lagos and Dar es Salaam, you would return to the aircraft after a layover and fifty plus gallons could be missing. This was accepted as the norm, another unofficial African baksheesh!

Once again I could see that Leonardo was well up to speed and knew his job. After checking the many items of cockpit safety equipment which amongst others included, a BCF fire extinguisher, Draeger smoke hood, crash axe and crew life jackets in the back of the pilot seats, he took out the various Jeppesen charts for all three sectors. Remember the saying, ‘In God we trust, all else we check!’ Well it sometimes pays off even if you think that it’s not necessary. One UK Company that I worked for, I found that there was an item written by one Captain some pages back in the aircraft tech log which stated that the cockpit lifejackets had demo use only stamped on them. So it pays to check, remember the A320 surfing on the Hudson, best to find this sort of thing out before you actually need them?

Meanwhile, Ermelinda popped her head around the cockpit door, I pointed out that the galley power was now on in case there was any chance of a cup of something hot, whilst also discussing between us the need to keep the forward toilet locked so only the crew could use it. The need for this became apparent as the further back down the aircraft you walked the worse was the smell of stale urine. You see a lot of the passengers that we carried during Hajj operations had no concept of toilets or how to use them, bizarre but true as some of the stains up the fuselage wall would attest to. So some bright spark had come up with a colour poster for the toilets which tried to explain the obvious, two different methods of how to use them were illustrated, and we live in the 21^st Century, some times it’s hard to believe. Needing some fresh air, I rather pointlessly donned my high-viz vest, well you never know where there might be an ‘elf and safety’ spy, and stepped into the fresh air of a bright Eritrean January morning to start my aircraft walkround.

Arriving back on the flightdeck Leonardo had loaded the FMS with all the required navigation and performance data, and completed the cockpit setup, ensuring all the switches were in the correct position prior to starting engines. I tried to persuade Rory to come and join us on our adventure, chatting to him whilst I signed the technical log, but he would have none of it. Rory swiftly left before I tried any firmer means of persuasion and was replaced by our smiley agent and a shabbily dressed colleague, one who advised us that he had our Notams. His helpful assessment was that, “there were no valid Notams, except in Asmara where no fuel was available!” Brilliant, that was it, and all we were going to receive, a kind of poor man’s verbal briefing. He was to be known for the next ten days as Mr. Notam, amongst other names not suitable for a family publication. Heaving all the ground staff off of the aircraft with copies of loadsheets and ‘security’ documents, I instructed Ermelinda to close the front door, and unfortunately still no hint of a cup of coffee! Leonardo was pilot flying for the first sector, so after he completed a comprehensive first emergency and departure brief, we amalgamated the pre-flight and before start checklists into one, expediting our departure, and allowing us to leave a few minutes ahead of schedule.

Clearance to start engines was obtained from both ATC and our ground crew, noting the reduced duct pressure provided by the aircraft’s APU due to our high altitude, we started our number two engine, and boy was it slow to start. This was followed by an equally sluggish number one engine; all parameters were within limits though. Dismissing the ground crew, and accomplishing the after start checklist finishing with setting the flaps to five degrees, our take off setting today, Leonardo called for taxi clearance. All clear on both sides, and clearance to taxi to the runway’s only holding point, I released the brakes, no increase of engine power was  required, as we were both very light and parked on quite a marked downhill slope!

After checking the full and free movement of the flight controls we received our departure clearance from the Asmara tower controller which was basically a left turn after departure avoiding the city on course climbing to 35,000 feet. After reviewing the take off briefing Ermelinda gave us a cabin secure check, and I armed the auto-throttle whilst Leonardo selected the engine start switches to continuous as per Neos company procedures. With the before take off checklist now complete, we received clearance to enter and backtrack runway 07, we seemed to enter the runway at the bottom of a dip, as it was all up hill to the runway’s end. Two rather large eagle type birds (sorry I’m no Bill Oddie!) were basking in the sun, wings outstretched but definitely in our way slightly off to one side of the runway centre line and right in line with our number two engine, flashing our landing lights had no effect. Unfortunately Boeing’s do not come fitted with a horn, whilst slowing down so as to not ruin either of our days, they fortunately realised we were the bigger bird and with half a dozen lazy strides became airborne and headed off towards the tank like armoured vehicle parked on the airport’s perimeter. Turning off of the centre line at the runway’s end, taxiing to the left I started to follow the painted yellow line to guide us while turning around, and quickly decided against it as I was pretty sure that my B737 was not the four-wheel off road version, which is where we would be if we’d continued.

Now pointing the right way and lined back up on the centreline with all checks complete, we were given takeoff clearance. I mentally ran through the rejected takeoff drill, switching on my weather radar and switching off the taxi light as we rolled slowly forwards, Leonardo advanced the thrust levers to 40%N1 before pressing the TOGA switches and off we trundled. There seemed to be more potholes on the runway than the road outside of our hotel, one was so large, that later on our return we would actually steer the aircraft around it as I imagined replacement tyres were probably at a premium here in Asmara.

I quickly called 80 and shortly after V1 and Rotate speeds almost simultaneously, as Leonardo eased the nose up to around 15 degrees of pitch initially before the automatics worked out a more suitable pitch attitude for our initial climb out. The only instruction we were given by ATC was to fly around the city before turning onto a heading which would intercept the Northerly track out of the Asmara VOR defining the airway up to the Eritrean Saudi Arabian border. A task made easier for us due to the high elevation we were starting from, so as a result our TAS was immediately about 20% higher than our IAS giving a larger radius of turn comfortably keeping us visually on the periphery of the town. Not that I thought they’d be any noise monitoring posts, not here not anywhere in Africa, noise abatement in Africa is more of a courtesy than a requirement I’ve found. Anyway passing around 9,300 feet the autothrottle system set the full climb thrust rating, and with a hint to Leonardo that the 10,000 feet checks could be delayed awhile, considering the altitude which we’d started from; we were shortly passing both the minimum safe altitude and transition altitude of 11,500 feet and heading in the right direction. After reselecting the altimeters to the standard setting Leonardo selected the B system autopilot and then the minimum clean speed on the MCP so that we could accelerate the aircraft and retract the flaps on schedule. With the aircraft cleaned up and the after takeoff checklist complete and accelerating to our initial climb speed of 290 knots prior to selecting VNAV, it was time to concentrate on looking out the window and realising just how beautiful this country actually was. My spell as a tourist was curtailed by the Asmara controller handing us over early to Jeddah, no radar in Eritrea and no known traffic meant ‘no problem’.

As we approached the border between the two countries level at our cruise altitude of 35,000 feet, importantly there was still no cup of coffee or sandwich yet, and as an aside still no contact with Jeddah ATC either, though we could hear other aircraft transmitting to them, we were still just a bit too far away. The arrival routing for Jeddah, via waypoint KASER had already been programmed by Leonardo into the FMS and the expected runway 34R, so we knew that we were heading in the right direction. Just enough time for a quick check of the Notams for Jeddah, nothing special except that if we had passengers we were to inform them when we passed various holy sites, I suppose so that they could start praying, fortunately we were empty, so not necessary. Although maybe if they thought it was my landing, then this alone would be sufficient need to summon up divine intervention! So I busied myself with a quick fuel check, plenty was my conclusion as we had enough to hold for a good few hours before returning ‘back’ to our alternate of Asmara, and time to quickly complete the rest of the paperwork. Leonardo in the mean time calculated the necessary landing data, speeds flap and autobrake setting required for landing an empty aircraft on a 4,000 meter runway! Time for a quick landing brief, and now we were in contact with Jeddah ATC, descent clearance.

The arrival routing was promptly cancelled by the Jeddah radar controller and we were cleared descent to 6,000 feet and to maintain high speed, which for Neos meant M0.78 until reaching 290kts IAS. We were number one for the approach and sent direct to the initial approach fix for runway 34R, crossing the coast to the South of the airfield, even in the haze and the blowing sand it was obvious how beautiful the beaches could have been. Approach checks complete now that we had selected QNH, and still admiring the scenery out of the window I contemplated if bikinis and beach bars would ever be allowed down there! Leonardo was enjoying himself too, and I could see the mental cogs whirring as he kept updating his high speed continuous descent approach. Twenty miles from touchdown he started to slow up, calling for flaps to be extended and as we did so intercepting the ILS localiser and glideslope, this was good I thought, and it was followed by a thoroughly respectable landing considering the turbulence caused by the thermals and gusty wind. Exiting to the left of the runway after a landing roll which would have impressed a carrier pilot, it was obvious where we had to taxi to as up ahead appeared the mighty Hajj terminal. This was a structure modelled on what I could only describe as a vast number of interlinked Bedouin tents, spectacular, and possibly a future design for London’s Heathrow? Parked at this terminal were aircraft from airlines which I had never heard of before, some of which were operating old, very old by the look of them, classic B747 types.

Our parking stand was a remote one abeam the terminal’s main structure, and apparently flanked by stockpiles of bulging discarded sacks, pieces of luggage and a vast array of water containers, or so I thought! This was where the fun was about to begin, and by the end of the turnaround I’d need something stronger than coffee to calm my nerves. As true here as anywhere it would materialise, the easy part of aviation is the flying, the operating of the aircraft. The difficult part is what goes on whilst you have the aircraft doors open and trying to manage the ground operation, with those members of the ground staff whose sole goal it is to make life as easy as possible for them, whilst severely harassing and messing with you!

 

The fun was about to begin!    

                                                         

It’s only after the forward door opened that I realised just how hot it was, even in January the temperature was heading up to forty degrees. It was then that the groundstaff literally stormed the aircraft, there seemed to be a lot of men introducing themselves as ‘chiefs’! But before dealing with them I wanted to ensure that we had chocks in place on the main wheels so that I could release the parking brake, after a long taxi in high temperatures with a light aircraft the brakes get hot quickly. The problem with a light aircraft is that it wants to accelerate even at idle thrust, so the technique is to allow the groundspeed to slowly increase to 20kts, and then apply one smooth brake application to bring the speed back below 10kts, but even this procedure will cause the brakes to eventually heat up.

So tie off, high-viz on, I made my apologies and left to check outside, we had chocks but that is not what immediately concerned me. Our forward hold was being loaded with an assortment of cases and sacks. The sacks being luggage, but when I tried to pick one up I quickly realised that standard weights for loading could not be used; I tried several in turn and reckoned that they must weigh twenty to thirty kilos each. Not only that, but there was a whole trolley loaded with various water containers, these contained gallons of Zam-Zam or holy water, and I estimated that there were around a hundred and fifty of these.

On re-entering the flightdeck I was told that we were full, 184 passengers and after making a quick mental calculation I realised that we had a problem, we would be too heavy. I asked the most senior looking ramp agent, who spoke flawless English, exactly how much baggage we had, only to be told it’s no problem, which was not the answer I was after! I pressed home my request for accurate information, but there was nothing forthcoming, it was then that Ermelinda asked to speak to me. She had a problem with the catering, and needed water uplifting too, but no one would talk to her, she was just shrugged off, a cultural problem to be overcome. I insisted that she was to be spoken to respectfully, and that her requests were to be actioned, this was met with more ‘yes, yes, yes!’ Leonardo reminded me that we needed to uplift fuel too, which I duly requested, which I was told was on its way. Our schedule allowed us the luxury of a two hour turnaround, and I realised I was going to need all of it!

So to the maths, we needed to depart with 16,000kgs of fuel for the flight to N’djamena, that was easy as that figure was non-negotiable, but calculating our zero fuel weight was the problem. Even being conservative with the figures, 150 pieces of baggage and the same again in containers of water, plus 184 passengers, we were more than 3,000kgs over the structural limit! I reckoned that we could take all the passengers but only 65 bags and no water. Well, this was not possible according to the ramp agent, nobody else leaves anything behind I was told. I insisted on my request but he just walked off. I tried calling Milan on our company mobile phone but was unable to be connected, the reason being, I had to register the phone and receive a validation from the operator first, Saudi Arabian red tape I suppose! So I did the only thing I could think of and handed over responsibility for this to Leonardo as it seemed way too complicated for me, and do you know, he had the situation resolved and our ops on the phone in less than 10 minutes. I was amazed, on speaking to the duty ops guy I was unceremoniously put on hold, and then heard a voice I was not expecting, my chief pilot. We bounced the ball back and forth between the two of us sparring like two unyielding tennis players, but it was explained to me that this was a once in a lifetime journey for the pilgrims and that I couldn’t leave anything behind. I hit what I thought was a winning backhand explaining in detail my predicament with the weight I was expected to carry, but was smashed out of the court and left knowing what was wanted of me!

I ended the call, Leonardo gave me a sympathetic smile, but I needed some time on my own to decide my next course of action and asked Leonardo to leave the flightdeck. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t consider an evening flight on Saudia back to London, but that was not the professional way to behave, so I formulated a plan, another plan!

I told the ramp agent what I wanted, no baggage and no Zam-Zam water, only passengers which caused a rather heated argument, another one that needed to be defused, I could feel myself starting to get wound up by it all which was not acceptable, so I left to supervise the refuelling! Glad I did, as the holy water was being loaded into the aft hold, on explaining that this was not to be placed onboard, I was rudely ignored, so climbing onto the conveyor belt I started unloading the rear hold myself, more heated discussions in the now forty degrees sunlight followed. Also it appeared that all the baggage was in the process of being loaded too, contrary to my instructions! I felt that I was losing control of the situation, and needed to make my mark in the sand, literally, but summoning over the senior ramp agent who previously spoke excellent English, he now pretended to not speak or understand English at all. It was only when I insisted on seeing his identity pass and made a pretence of writing his name down that his ability to speak English returned. I now played my joker, and said I would take 65 pieces of baggage, and arrange for the rest to be taken by our next flight. I had no idea if there was to be another flight, but it was a way for me to feel happy that we were safe, and for him to save face; an important concept which I had learnt to work around whilst being employed by the Koreans.

With the loading arrangements to my satisfaction, and the refuelling complete it was time to load the passengers. As each bus in turn deposited its colourful load onto the ramp, it was obvious that they had more water and cabin baggage, enough to send Ryanair cabin crew into orbit! Leonardo had managed to complete a loadsheet which had us at maximum zero fuel weight, and just over a 1000kgs below maximum take-off weight, so performance off of the 4000m runway would not be a problem.

So I was happy, I had finally managed to have the aircraft loaded the way that I wanted it. I remembered the B757 whose gear collapsed on taxi out from here last year after being overloaded on a Hajj flight, just because it’s a Hajj flight doesn’t mean you can compromise on safety, as there will always be something waiting to catch you out, and bite you! Ermelinda too had found a way to establish her own authority, as each time a member of the groundcrew boarded she insisted on personally scrutinising their identity pass, and made sure she took her time in doing so!

I thought it crazy, but our little team were fighting just to complete our little pieces of the big picture. Working the Hajj was becoming a bit like commuting on the M25 motorway; I certainly couldn’t do it on a daily basis, my sanity wouldn’t allow it! So passengers loaded, bizarrely men at the front and women at the back of the aircraft, even though they had boarded together, once onboard they had segregated themselves. All doors closed, pre-departure checks and Leonardo’s briefing complete, as he was pilot flying again for this sector, I started to smile, after all the problems, the hassles and the fights, as a team we had managed the situation and scored a small victory because I him to call for start clearance twelve minutes before scheduled departure time. For the second time today we were about to depart early, not even my boss could complain at that, well he would when he found out what I had left behind!

Except that the gods were against us, Jeddah ATC advised us that they had no flightplan for us to N’djamena, and that we must contact our company, in Italy!

I wasn’t prepared for the next twist, as nobody had told us. Saudi Arabia does not recognise Chad, and would not accept a flightplan to there as our destination. So our ops department in Milan had filed us to Khartoum in Sudan with one callsign, and on entering Sudanese airspace we were to change our callsign and destination so that we could continue onwards to N’djamena. Now I didn’t mind this arrangement, but it would have been nice for someone to have told us!

With this vital information known to us now Leonardo asked for start clearance with our new callsign to Khartoum. Success, we were cleared to start and pushback with no further delay, still a couple of minutes ahead of schedule. We had beaten the Hajj demons and emerged victorious…for now!