PIREP Leg 13 - Tehran Mehrabad, Iran (OIII) to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (OMAA)

[Bruce (a.k.a. brian747) 142]

It's Moscow. And it's cold. And I'm fed up.

"Moscow?!", I hear you howl, "That's not in the brief". Ah but.... You see, to explain what follows I have to give you a bit of what novelists call the 'backstory' so that you can understand what's going on.

So suffice it to say that it *is* Moscow, and I'm in the cockpit of my freezing cold 747 in a remote corner of Vnukovo airport. Not Domodedovo UUDD, as you might have expected, or even Sheremetyovo UUEE, but Vnukovo UUWW for the simple reason that *that* is the airfield where the Moscow flights for Iran originate from, and I don't want to call attention to myself by doing anything unusual. For the same reason, I don't want to turn on the APU of the aircraft to advertise the fact that I'm in here, but happily in this parking spot I've got the benefit of an external power connection.

I'm here just to send some specially-coded messages over ACARS (the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System. This is a system which has been around for decades, of course, and which enables me in this rather unusual case to communicate without the need to use Moscow's heavily-monitored Internet or telephone channels. The reason why I'm taking the trouble to do this will become clear as we go along.

The thing is, you see, that when I described the operations of Brian's Charter in my previous narrative in this saga, I omitted certain pertinent details. The fact is that a former senior RAF officer with security clearances from here to eternity who is running a small charter company that puts aircraft in and out of many of the world's airports can occasionally be extremely useful to certain agencies of Her Majesty's Government (HMG). In fact, HMG even paid for certain unusual modifications to my 744 — and I don't mean built in cocktail cabinets or plush furnishings, either. Details of some of those mods may come to light as these sagas accumulate, but in this case a specially-enhanced ACARS system is all that's needed. However, in return (like the proverbial cheques, my OBE seems to be perpetually "in the post") I am able to occasionally ask for certain favours which would otherwise not be accessible to ordinary mortals.

However, the favour I was calling in at the moment concerned our favourite (?) jailbird, Mr. John Guest, who has contrived not only to get himself back in clink yet again, but in jail for religious crimes in the capital of Iran, of all places. But if I'm to complete the challenge, I need to get my hands on the baton; and to do that I have no option other than to somehow get JG out of there without starting a fairly major war in the tinder box that constitutes the Middle East. So, if this ploy works then — John, you will definitely owe me a favour or three!

"Be at Tehran Mehrabad (OIII) to pick up the baton from John". Ah yes, *that* was the original brief: it seemed straightforward enough, on the face of it, didn't it? Well it sort of did originally, in other words before it turned out that JG was once more doing time, so he wouldn't be able to hand over the baton on account of being detained in Iran for the foreseeable future.

So, actually, no, not a simple brief any more. Especially not when you consider certain relevant factors:

1. Let's start with John's incarceration, which has been previously mentioned. <sigh> Yes, he's in in jail AGAIN. (I know, I know — it's now a boring habit, if not a life-threatening compulsion, that's becoming a bit worrying...). But to be brutally frank that's only the first of my worries (sorry, John!), as you will see....

2. Following the political, social and economic consequences of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran has a fundamentalist régime that, to put it as gently as possible, is not especially friendly to passing Westerners or their aircraft.

3. As a result of (2), above, the insurance company would completely blow a gasket if they knew I was even vaguely considering landing my 747-400 in Iran. That would be closely followed by an even bigger explosion from the direction of Julie Lansdown, Financial Director and Company Secretary of Brian's Charter, with consequences I would prefer not to think about.

4. Although Tehran Mehrabad Airport *used to be* the primary airport of Tehran, at midnight on October 28th 2007 it ceased to be so and was replaced in that role for the vast majority of Iran's international flights (OK, other than a few flights to Saudi Arabia, and also some internal domestic flights) by Imam Khomeini International Airport (OIIE). Which means that a landing at old OIII will nowadays look even more suspicious.

5. And just in case all that wasn't enough, to the Iranian mind a landing at Mehrabad rather than Imam Khomeini International is bound to look *seriously* suspicious in any event in view of the large military presence on the south side of the airport. Taking airport pics for the photo album there is an activity that is quite definitely not to be recommended! (Unless your initials are JG, of course).

Hmm.... <sigh>

But you know how it is — I love a challenge. Which is also why I'm running a small Charter company, I guess.

So under the circumstances I made an executive decision (I *am* supposedly the Chief "Executive" Officer of Brian's Charter, after all) not to worry anyone back at base with the concept of a landing in Tehran. I definitely won't have any cargo on board for the Iranians to get excited about, anyway, since to be brutally frank there's not much in Moscow (my previous location, as you know) that the people in the Emirates (the destination where I'm to hand Joe the baton and pick up my next load) are interested in importing, hence this will be that grim prospect for a small Charter company, an empty flight. But to compensate for this Phil Lightfoot, my demon sales guy, has arranged for me to pick up a rather profitable cargo at Abu Dhabi, and hence in view of the fact that I'm flying south from Moscow I would naturally be overflying Iran on my way. Although without landing permission, obviously.

Hmm. Yes. However... just imagine if for some reason I needed to make an emergency landing...?

Now I have to be honest and admit that it's not an original idea (it sometimes helps to have been flying for a lot of years). Contrary to popular supposition, it's not quite true that no American aircraft have landed at Mehrabad Airport since the Islamic Revolution: in fact exactly one has done so — a Northwest Airlines DC-10 en route from Mumbai to Amsterdam which made an emergency landing there on June 19th 2005, following an indication of a fire in the cargo hold (which turned out to be a false alarm). The DC-10 left eight hours later without incident, either mechanical or diplomatic, a feat which I devoutly hope that I will be able to emulate (being mercifully free of John's evident compulsion to view the inside of as many jails around the world as possible).

But rescuing the baton (which inevitably also means recuing John) in order to be able to complete this mission is going to require some serious events to be made to take place within an unfriendly régime, and that in turn is what required me to call in one or two favours that I had been saving for a rainy day, which is why you found me sending coded ACARS messages with numb fingers from my cockpit in Moscow, 24 hours or so before I was due to take off for Abu Dhabi. Well, Abu Dhabi *eventually*, anyway.

So just about 24 hours after fumbling with the modified ACARS, I and my 744 abandoned the chills of Moscow headed for much warmer climates, as we took off and headed south just as my flight plan had stated. I always like to follow the flight plan I have filed.

Well initially, anyway.  

I have to admit that on this trip it seemed very strange to be flying an empty 747 — it's certainly something of an unusual event, simply because doing so is such an expensive hobby. With no freight or passengers, and not that much fuel, the aircraft is strangely light, too, so that even with a derated take-off it still climbed out of UUWW like a thing possessed. The other different aspect on this flight is the relative silence. Normally, there's a fair bit of back-chat over the intercom from CJ, my genial Loadmaster, but since I wasn't going to risk the freedom of any more people than absolutely necessary with the forthcoming Tehran stunt I had sent him on ahead, to his extremely vocal disgust. So there's only me and Ken (my FO for this trip), and an awful lot of expensively empty aircraft behind us.

It might surprise you to know that the régime in Iran is these days (well, as of last August, anyway) actively encouraging overflights (which they then charge by the hour for "monitoring and radar equipment"), so there was no problem getting our flight plan and overfly accepted. Little did the Iranians know that they would soon also be adding landing fees to the bill...  

But one has to be careful *even with what you say over the radio* to these people. In 2010 the Iranian government announced that any airline which referred to the waterway between Iran and the Arab states as 'the Arabian Gulf' would forthwith be banned from its airspace (necessitating an expensive detour on some routes): they insist that everyone in their airspace must use the term 'the Persian Gulf'.  <sigh>  Sounds a bit like past English discussions with the French about the designation of the English Channel. Anyway....

Suffice it to say that if we achieve a brief time on the ground to (hopefully) collect the baton I'm going to remain pretty tight-lipped, I can tell you! John has already demonstrated the consequences of possessing loose vocal chords, which is why he has now added the interior of Tehran's jail to his burgeoning collection of mental memories of slamming metal doors.

So during the cruise from Moscow down towards Georgia I had a discussion with Ken about the nature of the emergency that would require us to "land at the nearest available airport", as the good book (a.k.a. the 744's Quick Reference Handbook) pithily puts it. In order to keep things as simple as possible, we opted for an alleged wheel well fire. If it were real, the event would be notified to us on the upper EICAS display like this:





But of course, this time we would only be pretending to be seeing it. Well, at least I hope so..

Once over the Azerbaijan border and inside Iran's airspace we waited until OIII was indeed the nearest available airport, and then went smoothly into our routine. Ken was flying this leg so I was on the radio, and if I gave you the slightest impression that the people I was talking to were delighted to receive a request for an emergency landing at OIII then I would definitely be misleading you. But international protocols left them with very little choice, I guess, since in the end they grudgingly granted me permission to land.

Meanwhile, we had followed SOP by reducing speed to below the 747's gear extended limit of 270 kts / 0.82M, just in case someone in Iranian ATC was acquainted with the 744 abnormals. And, to hopefully foil any pointed questions later on, I kept up a stream of comments to ATC about the fact that the FIRE WHEEL WELL message had unaccountably disappeared — no, wait a minute, it's back again — and so on. Hopefully, when an inspection on the ground revealed no signs of fire whatsoever we could simply shrug and say that obviously a detector was intermittently malfunctioning. But soon we were on finals for a landing at OIII and too busy to be concerned with relatively minor details.





As soon as we had landed we were brusquely ordered to a parking space well away from everyone else (and on the opposite side of the runways to the military presence, of course), and then told to open the doors — whereupon the aircraft was invaded (no other term is appropriate) by hordes of heavily-armed and equally heavily-bearded men. I did briefly consider not opening the cockpit door, just to tease them a little, but when they made it very clear that they would open it regardless, using their own methods, Ken and I exchanged resigned glances and let them in, while we made suitable preparations to search the wheel wells — with suitably puzzled frowns all round when we found no signs of fire anywhere.

I will skip over the events of the following half an hour or so, since they were excessively and all too predictably tedious. However, we were eventually able to convince our reluctant hosts that in spite of (the lack of) appearances our emergency had been genuine — something that was significantly  helped by the fact that the aircraft was empty and hence presented no possible danger to the security of the old OIII airport, so obviously we could have no obvious motive for *wanting* to land.

Then came the tricky bit, when I had to tell them that to avoid us being out of hours for the continuing trip we needed a couple of hours of 'rest' away from the aircraft before we could legally take off again. After an irritable exchange with base over his walkie-talkie, the head honcho unceremoniously herded us across to the nearby terminal where, I was dismayed to note, there was no sign of John and in fact no evidence that my messages from Moscow had been received or acted upon.

All we could do was to wait.

Clearly, the generally-accepted need for aircrew to be afforded the convenience of air conditioning whilst resting in humid climates did not play well with the revolutionary ethic, but we weren't about to make any trouble about it. So we sat there, sweating in the heat and humidity, whilst also keeping a wary eye on our aircraft as best we could, and (in my case) trying hard not to look at my watch too often.

Moments after the requested two hours' rest was over we were summoned to the door, but once we were outside the terminal the head honcho addressed us once more in his inimitable style. In other words as if, as HM Queen Victoria might have put it, he was addressing a public meeting. "You, British!", he declaimed. Since he had spent fully five minutes examining each of our passports when we arrived, we were on fairly safe ground with this one, so we admitted it. "We deporting a British. You take him.", he then announced. When charm was handed out, this boy was in a different queue, but at that point I had to restrain myself from kissing the idiot out of sheer relief. And sure enough, clad in prison fatigues, bang on cue John Guest came shambling around the corner accompanied by a couple of guys who could only be prison staff, and was then ostentatiously relieved of his handcuffs before being shoved in our direction.

All three of us then proceeded, or in John's case staggered, to our aircraft, which was now surrounded by a ring of guards, weaponry conspicuously at the ready. Presumably they were as bored as we were and were vaguely hoping that we might be crazy enough to try something.

Fat chance.

While Ken did an especially careful 'walk around' the outside of the aircraft, quite literally checking everything twice, I was doing the same with all the switches in the cockpit, having relieved an obviously groggy John of the treasured baton and installed him in the jump seat. Meanwhile, whilst our hosts were clearly pleased to be able to charge us a landing fee as well as well as fees for the soon-to-be-continued overflight, they were also childishly disappointed that we had no intention of buying any of their fuel. (I had also checked my fuel planning twice before leaving Moscow, to make absolutely sure that I had a plentiful sufficiency of the stuff so as to be able to take off and land at both our destinations, and still divert to the alternate if required).

John had seemingly fallen asleep as soon as I had strapped him in to the jump seat (a feat which, considering its meagre proportions, I would previously have considered impossible) — clearly the poor chap hadn't had a fun time in Tehran. But with the delicate part of the operation behind us, the remainder of the trip was going to be much more straightforward — almost due south across the (let me try and phrase it according to the sensibilities of the Iranians) *Persian* Gulf and then into Abu Dhabi, OMAA.

I had in any case already programmed the route into RTE 2 in the FMC before leaving Moscow.  





At last it was high time to leave Tehran Mehrabad. However, also back in Moscow, whilst preparing the Tehran take-off part of the trip, I had noticed that on the airport briefing page on the charts for the airport there is the following terse warning, here rendered verbatim: "Pilots should ensure that they do not enter danger or prohibited areas in TMA and all the time remain at or above the minimum safe altitude". Hmm. So since we had been assigned runway 11R for take-off, let's have a look at a chart and check out the areas in question.

 

Clearly, our main priority immediately after take-off has to be to stay away from the mountains on the left, but perhaps even more so to stay away from area OI ( R ) - 66 whose boundaries are denoted by the grey slashes — which is an awful lot closer to our intended flight path than those mountains! We will then be turning right to continue on our route south anyway, but it would be extremely useful to make absolutely sure that during our climb out of the airport there is no chance whatsoever that we might accidentally stray over the edge of that area (not wishing to give any trigger-happy Iranian the slightest excuse, you understand — they might lack the social niceties but even *they* can't miss a target the size of a 747 as it slowly claws its way into the air). And then there's the question of the minimum safe altitude: if you look at the MSA circle as shown on the top right of the chart, you will see that ideally we really don't want to hang around below FL100 (and, incidentally, the Transition Altitude in these parts is 9,000 ft).

Happily, the 744's CDU has a key which summons the helpful FIX page, and from there you can put all sorts of useful markings on the Navigation Display to help remind you about things like that, things that you really want to know about at a time when you're also quite busy doing many other things.





As you can see, we are currently parked to the north of... well both runways, in fact, with our nose pointed 098°. You can see the mountains in yellow and (the high parts) in red on the Terrain display which is superimposed on the ND — hopefully we won't be flirting with those! The runway heading for 11R is 106°, and is denoted by the dashed magenta line extending to the 'buck teeth' at the edge of the compass rose; and I have also used the FIX page to add a dashed green line from the TRN VOR which denotes the edge of the OI ( R ) - 66 area that we have to avoid at all costs. However, I'm happy to say that our intended course is shown by the solid magenta line, and as long as we manage to follow it (and you can bet that I'll be giving it my best shot!) then we should be in no danger. But just in case, it's good to know exactly where the boundary of the no-fly zone is....

Being so light, and having over thirteen thousand feet of TORA (Take Off Run Available) on this runway, it would have been silly not to use an assumed temperature take-off, so using the CDU I fired off the request, and a short time later the answer was printed out on the printer on the aisle stand, and I duly entered 63° into the THRUST LIM page.




The cockpit was cooling down nicely, now that the packs had been running for a while, and we continued with the take-off prep.





As we progressively woke the aircraft up and then started the engines, Ken called for taxy clearance, at which point we were somewhat startled to be directed to cross the twin runways before proceeding along the taxyway next to our departure runway on the *military* side of the airfield.

Slightly nervously (was this where we were arrested for daring to glance at the revolutionary (strictly in the old-fashioned sense) aircraft?), I got the 744 moving at a gentle 10 kts and followed the directions we had been given, but seemingly the reason for specifying that route was nothing more sinister than a desire to see us back in the air as quickly as possible — something that suited us very well indeed.





Having crossed both runways, we turned right alongside rwy 11R and trundled along the taxyway towards the runway threshold.

 

When it came to the Before Take-off Checklist, it broke the tension a little to throw in an additional item.

Flight controls?      CHECKED
Transponder?        TA/RA, SET
Exterior lights?       ON
Baton?                   SECURED!  <grins>
<snore>                 (No response needed, that was John)

Once lined up on the runway threshold, as soon as take-off clearance had been given I brought the throttles upright and allowed the engines to spool up. Once convinced by both the growl and the gauges that all was well, I pressed the TOGA switch and the engines' note rose rapidly to a high-pitched whine, and we then started to be pressed back in our seats by the enormous thrust I had just unleashed. With our light weight (and even in spite of a derated take-off) once again V1 and VR came up rather faster than we were used to, and I gently eased the enormous jet into the air, her natural element.








Once we were above 10,000 ft we started to breathe more easily. We had the baton! Oh, and John too, of course. 





The flight to Abu Dhabi was entirely straightforward, and (it was probably as a result of the relief we were feeling) it didn't seem to take all that long before we were descending towards our destination and crossing the Persian Gulf. Or perhaps <sigh> we'd now better start referring to it as the *Arabian* Gulf, to be sure of not offending anyone on *this* side of the water?





Landing was a piece of cake (one thing about airfields in these regions, they do benefit from the fact that the locals have plenty of space in which to build long runways), and we had been assigned a gate at the far end of runway 13R close to terminal 2, ready to collect our incoming cargo. So as Ken cleaned up the flaps and speedbrakes and did all the usual post-landing tasks I taxyed the aircraft gently towards the terminal....





....and parked at the assigned gate.





After all the excitement attending the middle part of the flight, the final phase was almost an anticlimax. We shut down all the systems and woke John from his beauty (OK, not literally) sleep. As we all emerged from the aircraft and felt the heat and ambiance of Arabia envelop us, we exchanged farewells and went our separate ways. A black Range Rover with a taciturn female driver had arrived to take John and his absence of passport away ("Hi, Jasmine!", I offered, but she's evidently not the sociable type — or perhaps she was just overwhelmed with joy at the prospect of seeing John again); Ken didn't stand on ceremony but headed directly for the delights of a long cold beer (which is far from difficult to find in Abu Dhabi, of course, since the place sports many bars and even nightclubs — just be sure not to consume alcohol if you're driving!); while after seeing them both safely on their way I wearily headed for the main terminal to hand the baton over to Joe.

Leg 13 had certainly lived up to its "lucky for some" reputation.

 

One way and another, it has been a hard day's flight.



Simulation details:

Unbelievably complete 747-400 aircraft simulation, ATC, traffic generation, and planetary realtime weather, : Precision Simulator X v10.0.3 beta 12

Scenery generator: FSX

Information injection into FSX for the visuals: VisualPSX

Traffic injection into FSX: TrafficPSX

FSX external aircraft texture: the stock 747 (repainted)

OIII and OMAA FSX airport scenery: freeware from the Avsim library

Generic scenery: Orbx Global base, Vector, and OpenLC Europe, with worldwide mesh

 

Other ground textures: AS2012

 

[mutley 4,498]

Bravo Bruce, I watched you land and not even a puff of smoke 

Your cunning plan paid off. I was of the opinion to leave JG in the clink for a little while longer but Micke overruled me!

So two jobs in one, there will be a little bonus in your pay packet.

I will pick up JG as well as I have a lift back to Blighty lined up for him.

Thanks for a very enjoyable PIREP of such a straight forward leg. 

[J G 927]

Nice one Brian! Thanks for getting me out of Tehran. I guess I owe you a few beers. 

 

Great PIRIP - Now I have to stay out of the clink until leg 20.

[Bruce (a.k.a. brian747) 142]

@Joe

 

Thanks for that, my friend. There's never a dull moment in this outfit!  

 

> "I will pick up JG as well..."

 

Hmm, you'll probably have to prise him out of Jasmine's iron clutches first. When you get him (she'll probably want a receipt), make sure he's got his new passport with him too — you know what he's like!   

 

 

@John

 

> "I owe you a few beers..."

 

Oh, nothing that a small brewery wouldn't cover....   

 

> "Now I have to stay out of the clink until leg 20..."

 

Now if I were a betting man.....     

 

 

Cheers,

 

Bruce

a.k.a. brian747

 

[J G 927]

Joe will have to drive down to Dubai to pick me up from some friends (Martin and Lisa) I have there, Its an easy drive on fantastic roads and only takes just over an hour from memory as I have driven it several times. (in real life!)

[mutley 4,498]

OK JG, got the address, I'll be around in a couple of days so you can regain your strength, and stay off the booze!

 

EDIT... I'll pop into OMDB on my way through and drop you off at Muscat where there is a transport flight home waiting...

[hifly 925]

Brian/Bruce, great story worthy of John le Carre. Can I buy the film rights?

[Captain Coffee 2,030]

Awesome story. Great PIREP. I almost called in to work late this morning, couldn't pull myself away from it.

I suspect that Brian and Pat Moran might (or might have) cross(/ed) paths one day, rumor has it they have similar security clearances.

 

and If I were a betting man, i'd bet a few bucks that J.G. is the only guy with International stickers all over his travel bags from Prison Gift Shops.

 

Hats off for a great read.

[hurricanemk1c 195]

Superb shots and story there Brian!

[needles 1,013]

Another great PIREP Bruce although I also would have been inclined to let JG sweat it out a bit longer. Micke ruined it by insisting someone gets him out sharpish.

Cheers.

[stu7708 244]

Dang, you guys are sure putting out some great PIREPs this year. I'll have to upgrade my plans for my flight to keep with the current standards

 

Brain/Bruce, it was a joy to read your story even though I feel slightly ashamed as the coordinator of the event that it took me more than two days to get around to commenting on it  

[brett 2,316]

I thought I was reading an excerpt from a book, excellent story Brian,  

[Bruce (a.k.a. brian747) 142]

Many thanks, gentlemen — I'm really happy you enjoyed it.  

 

 

@Needles

 

> "I also would have been inclined to let JG sweat it out a bit longer..."

 

It was *extremely* tempting, I must admit! However, the Baton Must Go On! (I guess), and he is needed for leg 20, so....  

 

 

@Micke

 

No problem whatsoever, my friend — life gets in the way for all of us, from time to time. Well, too b****y often, to be frank!  

 

 

Cheers,

 

bruce

a.k.a. brian747