A flight to forget
Oh what a flight
Okuk's Last Flight
B707 Anecdotes
B707 Introduction
A Biblical Story
A Biblical Story 2
A Biblical Story 3
Forbidden Fruits
Joe's Jolly (Poem)
The Golfer
Suitably Restrained
PX Advertisment 1
PX Advertisment 2
PX Advertisment 3
PX Article 1
PX Article 2
PX Article 3
The Check Ride
First and Last Flt.
First Command
DC3 KOK - POM
The Holiday
Friends at Last
History of P2ANQ
Ferry Flight
Crayfish
FO Cassanova
Larry Blackman
Secret Revealed
Airbus A300
Cargo Capers
Doing it Differently
Side Slip
Larry Blackman
4th Floor Memo
International Arsonist
Office Works
Thru Eyes of a Hostie
Airline Anecdotes
A FLIGHT TO FORGET Posted by Jasper Maskelyne
In 1976, the airline I was flying for in Papua New Guinea was about to introduce two jet types: internationally the Boeing 707, and on regional routes, the Fokker F28 Fellowship.
I thought that I was approaching my airline use by date, and hoped to go out on a high note, so I put in my bid for the Boeing 707 command.
The airline had a smart answer to that: they said that by the time I had qualified, I would be too old for the job.
With the cunning of a pilot, I countered that with the knights move in chess and put in for a similar position on the F28. This they were not expecting, and they could find no argument against it.
So I found myself in the Ansett Airlines training centre in Melbourne.
The course was conducted in a relaxed atmosphere: the electrical lecturer
drawing a blue chalk line on the blackboard and saying "Now we will take some of this here blue electricity".
With such guides, I had no trouble passing the ground course exams, and passed on to the next stage, actual endorsement flying in Perth, Western Australia.
The ground simulator was very primitive: the ground instructor would bash the cabin wall to indicate that I had just crashed. This happened frequently, for it took a long time for me to absorb the dynamics of flying a jet aircraft: on climb and descent the parameters were continually changing. Too fast for an old bloke.
Once arrived in the aircraft itself, my training pilot commented "You are flying it like a bloody old DC3!" and he was right, that was all I really knew. In the end I got by, and got type endorsement.
Back in PNG, after a short time I was given the task of training experienced F27 pilots on the jets.
One night, I was rostered to train a short rotund pilot. He had proved difficult in previous sessions, being just as behind the eight ball in a jet aircraft, as I had been, back in Perth.
Our flight was due to depart Port Moresby at 6pm, track across the Owen Stanley mountains to Lae on the north coast, then across the Finisterres to Madang, and on to Wewak, before we returned to Moresby, arriving home sometime after midnight.
But a typhoon in Hong Kong delayed our connecting B707 flight, which had aboard all of our passengers for transhipment. It finally arrived two hours late, and by the time Customs and Immigration had cleared our pax, we were not able to depart until 9pm.
The PNG Civil Aviation authorities had strict roster rules for their control tower staff. At that time of night, all the north coast controllers were due to knock off work. So they advised us that we would be on our own, but the runway lights would be left on at each port.
In any case the weather was fine and forecast to remain so, so there was no problem. Or was there? In those days there were no mountain top VHF relay stations, and all of our communications, once the north coast towers were closed, would depend on a noisy static prone High Frequency link with an operator in Moresby who didn’t like listening to static either, so he turned the gain control down.
Finally we were on our way: the weather was as forecast, with a million stars shining above us. After a quick transit at Lae, another beautiful flight to Madang.
At this port we fuelled to the company requirement: alternate fuel for return to Moresby for all night flights.
We left Madang with a full load of 75 passengers for Wewak. At top of descent I scanned the radar and remarked to the small rotund pilot (Call him SR for short) "It appears that we shall have to make an instrument approach to Wewak". The radar showed three active storm cells just to the north of the runway. No sooner had we commenced descent than we lost communications with Port Moresby on high frequency radio. Not good, but we had contact on VHF with our company in Wewak ahead, and I decided that we could continue, and get the company to phone our arrival to Moresby. This was not a good decision, and the SR pilot did not contribute to it, in fact he was not contributing anything much at all.
At the minimum descent altitude we were in heavy rain with lightning all around. No sight of the airport, so we made a missed approach and climbed back to 24,000 ft . We still had no contact on high frequency with Port Moresby, so I told our company to advise them we were returning to Madang, where we knew the weather was fine.
We rapidly approached Madang with the question: were the runway lights still on? At ten miles out we saw the lights, and at five miles realised they were the lights on the road to town. Everyone had gone home to bed. And we had no-one to talk to.
This is where things really turned to worms, no lights, enough fuel to get to Moresby, but no weather forecast for the return flight, and no communications. Again, without reference to the SR pilot, I made the decision, stay over Madang, and try to re-gain radio contact by calling Sydney on South East Asia network HF channels.
Fortunately for us, Sydney Radio was wide awake, heard our calls and did all the things we asked them. Forty five minutes after arriving over Madang the runway lights came on, we descended and refuelled. We had arrived there with just as much fuel as we would have had remaining in our tanks had we diverted home as soon as we realised that everything was closed up below. With no regard for our fatigue, the company told us to go back to Wewak and have another go. We did that, and got in that time.
That was 25 years ago. The SR pilot eventually passed his training course and went on to give many years of good service, but I don’t think he ever forgave me for leaving him out of the decision making loop that night.
Alistair
In 1976, the airline I was flying for in Papua New Guinea was about to introduce two jet types: internationally the Boeing 707, and on regional routes, the Fokker F28 Fellowship.
I thought that I was approaching my airline use by date, and hoped to go out on a high note, so I put in my bid for the Boeing 707 command.
The airline had a smart answer to that: they said that by the time I had qualified, I would be too old for the job.
With the cunning of a pilot, I countered that with the knights move in chess and put in for a similar position on the F28. This they were not expecting, and they could find no argument against it.
So I found myself in the Ansett Airlines training centre in Melbourne.
The course was conducted in a relaxed atmosphere: the electrical lecturer
drawing a blue chalk line on the blackboard and saying "Now we will take some of this here blue electricity".
With such guides, I had no trouble passing the ground course exams, and passed on to the next stage, actual endorsement flying in Perth, Western Australia.
The ground simulator was very primitive: the ground instructor would bash the cabin wall to indicate that I had just crashed. This happened frequently, for it took a long time for me to absorb the dynamics of flying a jet aircraft: on climb and descent the parameters were continually changing. Too fast for an old bloke.
Once arrived in the aircraft itself, my training pilot commented "You are flying it like a bloody old DC3!" and he was right, that was all I really knew. In the end I got by, and got type endorsement.
Back in PNG, after a short time I was given the task of training experienced F27 pilots on the jets.
One night, I was rostered to train a short rotund pilot. He had proved difficult in previous sessions, being just as behind the eight ball in a jet aircraft, as I had been, back in Perth.
Our flight was due to depart Port Moresby at 6pm, track across the Owen Stanley mountains to Lae on the north coast, then across the Finisterres to Madang, and on to Wewak, before we returned to Moresby, arriving home sometime after midnight.
But a typhoon in Hong Kong delayed our connecting B707 flight, which had aboard all of our passengers for transhipment. It finally arrived two hours late, and by the time Customs and Immigration had cleared our pax, we were not able to depart until 9pm.
The PNG Civil Aviation authorities had strict roster rules for their control tower staff. At that time of night, all the north coast controllers were due to knock off work. So they advised us that we would be on our own, but the runway lights would be left on at each port.
In any case the weather was fine and forecast to remain so, so there was no problem. Or was there? In those days there were no mountain top VHF relay stations, and all of our communications, once the north coast towers were closed, would depend on a noisy static prone High Frequency link with an operator in Moresby who didn’t like listening to static either, so he turned the gain control down.
Finally we were on our way: the weather was as forecast, with a million stars shining above us. After a quick transit at Lae, another beautiful flight to Madang.
At this port we fuelled to the company requirement: alternate fuel for return to Moresby for all night flights.
We left Madang with a full load of 75 passengers for Wewak. At top of descent I scanned the radar and remarked to the small rotund pilot (Call him SR for short) "It appears that we shall have to make an instrument approach to Wewak". The radar showed three active storm cells just to the north of the runway. No sooner had we commenced descent than we lost communications with Port Moresby on high frequency radio. Not good, but we had contact on VHF with our company in Wewak ahead, and I decided that we could continue, and get the company to phone our arrival to Moresby. This was not a good decision, and the SR pilot did not contribute to it, in fact he was not contributing anything much at all.
At the minimum descent altitude we were in heavy rain with lightning all around. No sight of the airport, so we made a missed approach and climbed back to 24,000 ft . We still had no contact on high frequency with Port Moresby, so I told our company to advise them we were returning to Madang, where we knew the weather was fine.
We rapidly approached Madang with the question: were the runway lights still on? At ten miles out we saw the lights, and at five miles realised they were the lights on the road to town. Everyone had gone home to bed. And we had no-one to talk to.
This is where things really turned to worms, no lights, enough fuel to get to Moresby, but no weather forecast for the return flight, and no communications. Again, without reference to the SR pilot, I made the decision, stay over Madang, and try to re-gain radio contact by calling Sydney on South East Asia network HF channels.
Fortunately for us, Sydney Radio was wide awake, heard our calls and did all the things we asked them. Forty five minutes after arriving over Madang the runway lights came on, we descended and refuelled. We had arrived there with just as much fuel as we would have had remaining in our tanks had we diverted home as soon as we realised that everything was closed up below. With no regard for our fatigue, the company told us to go back to Wewak and have another go. We did that, and got in that time.
That was 25 years ago. The SR pilot eventually passed his training course and went on to give many years of good service, but I don’t think he ever forgave me for leaving him out of the decision making loop that night.
Alistair
