Whilst we were living it up in Beijing First Officer Wang, with a senior pilot from China Ocean Helicopter Corp, our sister company, was in Tanjian airport planning our return. The plot was that we would fly to Zhangxiaoji to refuel, continue on to Shanghai, refuel again and then carry on to Wenzhou were COHC had another operation. There we would night stop. The next morning, Wang would remain and First Officer Jing would fly with me to Shenzhen.
It was January, 6th Jan 1997 to be precise and Northern China was in the middle of winter. The temperature overnight would drop to minus 15 and in the morning it would rocket up to about plus 2. My engineers were coming with me so after the goodbyes we punched orft daun sauf.
There is no such thing as general air traffic in China. A minimum of twelve hours notice is required and one always flies airways under IFR. We climbed just south of Tianjin and we joined the airway at our allocated height of 2,500 metres, approx, 8,200 ft, which was the minimum flight level going south. The temperature at that height was about -5 but as the Siberian High was established there was no cloud up to that level. The scenery was miserable; miles and miles of paddy as far as one could see, all in orderly rectangular pattern.
After a couple hours or so the cloudbase dropped and we started to run into streaks of status. The reaction of the centre windscreen, unheated, was instantaneous and it immediately fogged out with ice. This was followed by the mirror supports and the door hinges building up wedges of the stuff. Poor old Wang was having kittens. He, with his fellow students, had been listening with horror to their Chinese Navy instructor reeling off the horrors and the certain death that icing would bring to helicopters. Which I thought was strange, as they were taught on Russian designed helicopters that were built for blundering through the tundra. I wasn’t worried, this was peanuts compared to the North Sea and the aircraft, still in North Sea fit, had all the gizmos; ice detectors, mirrors to check the intake chip baskets, etc etc. To make him feel better I splashed some water onto my flying glove, stuck it out of my window where the water immediately froze. I then brought it in and flicked my fingers to show how easily the ice came off. Relieved he came back from the cockpit roof and carried on with his navigating and I surreptitiously shoved my hand between my backside and the seat cushion to try to get some feeling back in my fingers.
We then had our clearance to descend towards Zhangxiouji. This was a small military airfield in the middle of absolutely nowhere. As we taxied in Wang was discussing something with ATC and merely said there was a problem. As we shut down everybody was staring at us with open mouths. We had flown with a COHC callsign and the last thing they had expected was a British registered aircraft with a Western captain. The ‘problem’ was fairly serious. Wang had filed, and it had been accepted for the days flying, but Zhangxiouji had not received the onward flight plan.
I left my engineers to sort out the refuel and I stood, ankle deep in air traffic’s dog-ends in the tower. Wang was on the blower trying to sort something out and I had a look around. Apart from the ATC staff there seemed little evidence of any military activity. At the end of the building there were two rows of H-5 (il26) bombers in an advanced state of disrepair and behind them were a clutch of Shenyang J-5s (Mig 17) in a similar condition. It indicated that it may have been a training base once upon a time but they had moved on. On the near horizon was what I took to be the local town. Bleak, grey, with few buildings above two floors. I thought that if we had to night stop here we would be lucky to find 0.5 star hotel, if at all.
Wang struck lucky! Shanghai would not accept us because of the twelve hour rule but Changzhou would. We might not be able to get any further but at least it was civilised. Without further ado, because there were no catering facilities and we were dying of starvation, we got airborne.
Changzhou was a mixed military and civil airport. Something I found out as I taxied past a row of H-5 (Tu-16) bombers. The aircraft were immaculate, as was the ground equipment; even the wheel nuts had been painted. I turned on to the hardstanding and there was one of the prettiest terminal buildings I had ever seen. It was built like a Chinese pavilion with flying ridges and in front was a moat with bridges to the gates. We decided to have lunch whilst the going was good and after a ridiculously cheap repast in a beautiful restaurant we went up to the tower to see what the state of play was.
Shanghai wasn’t playing ball and because they controlled the airway halfway to Xiamin we could not cross that either to get to Wenzhou. We spent the afternoon trying various combinations to get to Wenzhou but they were all blocked by the 12 hour rule. At about five I decided that we were going to have to night stop and just after the engineers had gone out to put the blade socks on we got a call from ATC saying we were clear to go.
Shanghai had just got our original flight plan from Tianjin. We couldn’t go to Shanghai, we didn’t need to, but they did give us clearance to fly IFR through their Area. By the time we had ascertained that Wenzhou would be open at our ETA it was dark when we took off and this time with the mountains the minimum level was 3,000 metres, just over 9,800 ft. There was a long discussion with Shanghai control. He thought a 332 was an Airbus and he was trying to push us up to 7,000 metres. When he was corrected he could not believe that a helicopter was flying at that height, IFR and at night.
I thought about it to myself as well. In the RAF the maximum height without oxygen was 10,000 ft and on the QNH we were above that. Also we weren’t supposed to fly above 4,000 ft at night.
We were having to change our squawk quite often, more for identification than any other reason. Our track was taking us across the westerly routes from Shanghai and pointing directly at Taiwan. Apart from that it was uneventful until we were handed over to Wenzhou.
They wouldn’t answer. Wang then got on to the HF and started talking to the company ops in Shenzhen. They phoned the operation in Wenzhou and they confirmed that the airfield was all lit up. I pressed on and joined the procedure for the ILS and to my relief the ILS kicked in. At about five miles the runway lights started appearing from the gloom and still with no contact with the airfield I landed and turned off to the company hardstanding. After a few minutes all the airfield lights went out. I subsequently found out that all the air traffickers had gone home leaving a minion to turn out the lights after we had landed.
Two of the COHC engineers had British licences so they would look after the aircraft whilst I and my engineers checked into the airport hotel. It was farewell to Wang as he would stay in the company hotel down the road. It was too late for the hotel restaurant so we went to the ‘Garages’ by the airport entrance.
The Garages were a row of open fronted shop units now used as chop houses. The menu was simple. There was a table with all the raw materials they had laid out and you went from one to the other pointing out what you wanted cooking. Simple wooden tables and chairs were the furnishings and outside the single door at the back was the midden. That was where you treated the rats to a warm shower. The last time I had been there about a year previously we were entertained by a mother rat chasing her brood across the floor and carrying them back to her nest under the freezer. The food was, as before, brilliant and we retired for the night.