Nigels real world ramblings 7

[britfrog 180]

Back in the late 80's I was contacted by a friend who asked me if i still held a 727 type certificate (1179), which i did. he asked me if i was interested in a little flying job,  ferrying a 727 from Salisbury (Rhodesia) back to Bournemouth. As it was fast approaching xmas and the extra cash would be welcome of course i said yes. that was before i heard the full story that had been held back!!

     I arrived at Heathrow to catch the BA flight to Salisbury to find my friend with 2 others. these guys turned out to be engineers , well it was an early 3 crew 100 series a/c so what the hell? the early morning drive to Heathrow had left me with a fogged in brain!

     It became apparent on the flight south (via Entebbe) that i had been given the mushroom treatment! however it was now too late to pull out. I was informed that the plane that we were going to "ferry" back to the Uk had not turned a wheel for a few years and belonged to a tribal chief  (havent we all met one of them?)  to put it mildly i was a bit miffed that I had allowed myself to be put in such a situation  by a "friend" but there was precious little i could do about it now (half way across Europe) as it was unlikely our contact in Salisbury would be happy, let alone forthcoming with the funds to put me on the next flight back to Blighty. So highly peeved I determined to drink the bar dry on the flight out as my "friend" had already bought a round and was given the bill after each round. I have to say at this point that I have never taken to he name Harare or Zimbabwe as I as millions of others have, grown up to the colonial name of this previously prospering country.

     I finally managed to fall into a fitfull sleep only to be awoken by the landing gear hitting the ground and the cheer from the passengers that the crew had once again cheated death and landed us ,sort of successfully. As transit passengers we elected to stay on board whilst the plane was re-fuelled , and looking outside at the terminal we could still see the bullet marks from the Israeli commandos who had carried out the rescue of the hostages some little time before. I have to admit the country still had the pall of Mr. Amin about it and the scourge of aids was fast taking it's toll so was glad when the wheels rammed home in their uplocks as we climbed out over lake Victoria.       The remaining short flight blurred and I was again woken bleary eyed as we thumped home on the hard tarmac at Salisbury , sorry Harare. Having successfully negotiated customs and immigration , not an easy task there at the best of times, we managed to rendezvous with our contact , one of the chiefs sons, who had reserved rooms in a nearbye hotel close to the airport.

Whilst the rest of the crew stayed downstairs having a drink or five i headed to bed , my head was fuggy and i looked forward to an air-conditioned room and crisp starched sheets and pillows to rest my head on.

   Less than five minutes later I was heading back downstairs red with rage, as the airconditioning was not working nor the sheets crisp, well they might have been for the previous client., YECH!!!

so it was back to the bar - - -----

  I awoke the next morning bleary eyed with someone banging on the door and shouting something about eating breakfast as the bus was leaving soon, yeah right! OK"!

After quickly swigging a mug or two of something they called coffee and nearly breaking my teeth on a croissant i was physically dragged out to the bus complaining bitterly that my bacon and eggs had not arrived. By now the engineers had started to give me second glances , could i care?

      Officialdom in Africa and the Indian sub continent has to be experienced to be believed, we presented ourselves to the airport manager and requested his permission to go airside to inspect the aircraft, and after a certain amount of baksheesh exchanging hands we found ourselves on the tarmac opening the flap to lower the rear airstair. we gained access to the a/c and entered into what can only be described as a smelly hell hole. the a/c has been left closed up in the sunshine for a few years and the last passengers  that flew, must have had our last BA crew and been sweating up a breeze, one stepped inside and fell backward three steps, you get the picture. we eventually managed to get access to the flight deck and open all the windows  whilst the engineers commandeered a rolling scaffold to inspect the engines.

  surprisingly the a/c powered up on the low batteries and most systems seemed to be working, well, after a fashion. and so the day passed , the engineers did their thing as we all worked together to ascertain that we could make the beast flyable again.

Smelly heat takes its toll on one , so at the end of the day I was well happy to get back to my room have a shower and scrape of the grime that had accumulated during the day. Day two followed the format of day one and it wasn't till day 5 that the engineers pronounced that they were confident enough to attempt an engine start. By now the Apu had been fired up quite a lot as it was our sole source of cool air so with high expectations we started the engine start checklist.

Hey and what did you know they all fired up well, a bit smokey at the start but ok, t's and p's were roughly where they should be, no undue sounds , so we requested a run up. Well before you could count to ten an army jeep full of armed soldiers came skidding across the tarmac and deposited its contents in front of the a/c blocking any potential forward progress. Apparently there were outstanding parking charges to be settled before the a/c would be given permission to move. No doubt the manager had experienced problems in the past and was taking no chances. As we could not move we chose to run the engines up in situ so without any further ado we started and spooled  up each engine in turn , taking a bit of joy in watching the guards trying to waive their rifles in our general direction whilst plugging their ears at the same time. my friend , the skipper declared himself satisfied that the a/c would indeed fly so took himself off to the Rhodesian CAA to get a permit to ferry the a/c to the UK for further maintenance, and hopefully a sale. At the same time he called the owners son for them to arrange for the a/c to be released (more baksheesh)

Paperwork in ex-colonial countries is renowned for the time it takes, and despite the a/c owner leaning on various administrators (paying even more baksheesh) things were not forthcoming so we passed the time sitting next to the hotel pool running up the bar tab.

  Finally after 4 drunken days permission arrived in the form of an army colonel in a jeep at 7am who informed us that our departure was granted and that a moment was not to be lost as the permission might be refused at some time later in the day (presumably when the airport manager came on duty)

We fell out of the army jeep at the foot of the airstairs to be met by the re-fueler who asked how much we required , however he would not start the process unless he was paid in full , in cash in dollars!!!! before he attached the hose to the wing. As you can imagine at this point one starts tearing their hair out and it wasnt until two hours later that we were rescued once again by the son of the owner who arrived in the nick of time with the necessary funds in US dollars, plus our wages which up till now had somehow been overlooked (NOT!)

we had long since filed a full plan back to the UK  but clearance had not been forthcoming so after much cajoling (and more baksheesh) we managed to get clearance to N'Djamena with the promise of a further clearance whilst enroute. We needed no further encouragement, no sooner than we had all three turning and burning we obtained taxi clearance and after a legthy run up at the hold , take off clearance.

     What a blessed relief it was to be climbing above 15k feet with the cool air mixing with heat exchangers that had not been asked to do anything for a long time , the smell was pretty grim but the coolness was very welcome from the heat on the ground. there was a brownish haze back in the cabin created by the accumulation of dust in the various systems that took quite some time to settle down.

       By the time we reached 27k our happiness became short lived the engines were running far too hot , oil temperatures were already close to the red zone, and the oil pressures were worryingly low, so the climb was arrested  and we started with the help of the engineers  to create a situation where we could stabilise the engines sufficiently to continue the flight.

    There is nothing in this world that concentrates the mind more than having the prospect of a forced landing in the Sahara !

  Memories of pilots who have survived it after a long walk came to mind , so i started to take stock of our situation , what did we have? in short bugger all , in our haste to get away we had not even bought a bottle of water or a sandwich!! alarm bells started to ring!!

 It wasn't till nearly three hours later that I started to breath a bit more freely, blue is not my best colour!

We had planned to land at Algiers to refuel as they had the cheapest  Jet A-1 anywhere and landing fees were low as well, to encourage passing trade to take advantage of their duty free stores etc

    We started our descent from over 300 miles out to give the engines an easier time  skimmed over the mountain tops and we duly threw the plot at the ground.  There whilst awaiting enroute clearances , it became apparent , that there may be a problem.  

More waiting followed several visits to  atc  followed by more waiting and fewer promises. With the help of the long wave radio set we managed to make contact with Gibralter (manned by the RAF)  to whom we explained our situ, they managed to obtain for us a valid flight plan but the Algerians refused to acknowledge its existence and now we were not only liable to pay the for the  fuel that we had uploaded to be paid in cash as they didnt accept credit cards, but also the landing and departure fees. it was after a bit of a running battle with the airfield management and many phonecalls to Rhodesia and promises of payment from there that we noticed an armed guard , complete with Lee Enfield had been placed on our a/c, why? we spoke again to Gib explaining our situ but despite loads of sympathy they confirmed there was nothing that they could as it would create an international incident, and that the powers to be back in the uk would fall on their heads from a height if they got involved. 

  By now we had managed to have a meal and quite a lot of water with the promise of forthcoming funds and with the armed guard at the a/c the management lost interest in our comings and goings between the a/c and the terminal. Dark was falling, whenever we all entered the a/c the lone guard entered as well, and with a mixture of bad English and sign language he made us understand that if we tried to escape he had orders to shoot us. After a while the skipper went back to the guard who had positioned himself at the top of the airstair at the rear, with a smelly cheroot, it smelled uncannily like the camel dung fires I had smelt the previous year at Wadi Halfa, and asked if he knew anything about engines, he smiled a toothy grin through cracked lips and gestured, of course all army personnel had a working knowledge of engines! the skipper then explained slowly the reason for our arrival, the engines were not running properly, could he fix them? not to be outdone he proclaimed that his father was the best mechanic in the region and he had followed in his fathers steps. 

   Well non of us know how he managed it but the skipper managed to convince the guard to listen to the engines and diagnose the problem. with a wink the skipper started the engines, as expected, the tower quickly came on frequency to ask our intentions the skipper handed over the headset to the guard who explained I suppose that he was going to fix our engines, after which the guard with his toothy smile proclaimed himself happy and so we taxied to the end of the runway to show him a full powered run down the runway followed by heavy braking and lots of head shaking by the skipper imitated by the guard. After several minutes of gibberish the skipper managed to cajole this fool to apparently stand on the ground under the tail while he again ran up the engines so that he could apparently hear where the problem originated from. The guard now full of importance did as he was bid, skipper had a quick word with one of the engineers and told me to sit tight. and run up the engines a few times. after each run up th skipper through the use of sign language asked the guard if he could hear, or solve the problem, to which the guard gave some sort of response, he signalled the guard that he would try again and running forward he leapt into his seat opened the throttles fully and released the brakes . Well a lightly laden 727 even with sick engines can accelerate pretty rapidly and as it did so the engineer pulled up the rear stairs and before anyone knew anything we were airboune and heading out to sea in the direction of Gib and Blighty.

Algiers radio frantically tried to make contact with us of course we ignored them, they informed us that they had scrambled a couple of air force planes to shoot us down, all we could do was hope the crews had all gone home for the night and so it turned out to be. As we flew further north we were able to climb slightly higher than before due to the cooler climes and we arrived at Bournemouth without further problems to be welcomed by her majesty's best who had been informed that we had hijacked an aircraft by Algerian authorities through our embassy there. Happily it didn't take long to extricate ourselves from their clutches and with lots of hand shakes and quite a few laughs as we recounted our story, i was finally able to catch the last train to Woking where i had arranged for my wife complete with children to collect me

     We never did find out what became of our guard, poor soul he was really quite a decent type , just following orders. no doubt he was for the high jump.

    The plane never did fly again, it was broken up  a couple of years later, as once again parking fees were never paid, so the airport seized the a/c and sold it to the scrap merchants who were the highest bidders.

     I met the skipper a  year or so later in the pilots pal's bar at Biggin Hill , I had just landed from a day of parachute dropping and he was there sitting next to the old RAF ejection seat on top of the bar. Nigel!! he exclaimed as I entered ,  and everyone turned around to see who had arrived, "just the man" Look  I am working now flying  for Airtours and have a week off do you fancy a little flying job?--------

[Quickmarch 488]

Good one, Nigel. Thanks.

[Kevin Firth 114]

Nigel, if ever I find myself down your way I shall find us a halfway decent bar and get more of these stories out of you

[hifly 925]

That's a good one to tell the grandchildren.

[brett 2,316]

Good one Nigel.  

[allardjd 1,853]

I have it on good authority that most of Central and South America operate on pretty much the same basis as the African countries you mentioned.

[hifly 925]

I have it on good authority that most of Central and South America operate on pretty much the same basis as the African countries you mentioned.

 

And you can throw in some Middle and Far East countries too.

[MartinW 0]

That sounded like an episode from Discovery channels Dangerous Flights.

 

 

http://www.dangerousflights.ca/

 

 

 

Enjoyed that, fascinating read.

 

[Captain Coffee 2,030]

When is your collection of short stories coming out? I bet you could get a book published with stories of the caliber you share here for free....wait...never mind...carry on. :thum:

[hlminx 301]

Brilliant!

Loved every minute of your story. You should definitely publish a book with all your escapades..id buy it.

[britfrog 180]

Brilliant!

Loved every minute of your story. You should definitely publish a book with all your escapades..id buy it.

 

its a nice thought but I dont think I write well enough,

[mutley 4,498]

>   its a nice thought but I dont think I write well enough,

 

That's what editors are for Nigel   ... and if the recollection is interesting enough then most people would be happy to decipher the meaning.

[ddavid 149]

I'l help with the speling, Nigel!

Good story - encore.

Cheers - Dai.

[hlminx 301]

> its a nice thought but I dont think I write well enough,

That's what editors are for Nigel ... and if the recollection is interesting enough then most people would be happy to decipher the meaning.

I'll second that. There are 'ghost writers' or Editors to turn all your memories and stories into a 'collection'.

In this world of not being able to believe what you see, it's refreshing to read/hear stories of personal experiences that are both exciting, poignant, and above all true.

At least, please carry on telling your stories here for us lot to enjoy