There I was at twenty six thousand feet over central Iraq, 330 kts TAS and we're dropping faster than the US dollar. It's a typical November day in the Persian Gulf -- hotter than a chicken vindaloo in a heatwave and I'm sweating like a paedophile in Toys-R-Us.
But that's neither here nor there. The sky is obscured over Baghdad today and greyer than my shirts after the Cameroon contract. But it's 2007, folks, and I'm sporting the latest in navigation technology. Namely a window.
My 1975 Fokker 28 is equipped with an effective missile warning system, too. When the missile hits the engine, the fire bells come on in the cockpit, its amazingly efficient.
At any rate, the clouds covering Baghdad International Airport are as thick as Mike Tyson’s lips after fight night. But I've digressed.
The preferred method of approach tonight is the Pitch Up One Arrival. Basically you just pitch up and see what happens. This tactical manoeuvre allows the pilot to ingress the landing zone in an unpredictable manner, (much like many African operations) thus exploiting the supposedly secured perimeter of the airfield in an attempt to avoid enemy surface-to-air-missiles and small arms fire. Or large arms fire, for that matter.
Personally, I wouldn't bet my tight white ass on that theory but we’ve forgotten how to do a normal approach and that's the real reason we fly it.
Speedbrake out and gear & flaps down through 15000, I gently ease the aircraft into a 60 degree right hand bank. This maneuver is called ‘looking out of the opposite window for the airport’ but you do have to be careful because it can dislodge peanuts from the throttle quadrant. Even worse, it might wake the engineer who is slumbering on the jump seat.
Lying to ATC, we ditch the minnie-mouse voiced yank chick on Balad and chop to approach. Still in cloud, with the 6-mile TCAS looking like one of those kaleidoscopes you had when you were a kid. Or a mathematical version of alphabet soup.
It's strong coffee effect appreciation time as I descend the agile Fokker to six thousand feet AGL on downwind, turning to smile for a couple more pics by the new flight attendant and emptying my mug in case of spills when I bend it in like Beckham. We get a visual on the runway at 0.7 dme overhead at 2000' still going down like a whore’s drawers just before we suddenly have to pull a 2G turn to avoid that $#&%ing balloon again. Now the fun starts. We chop to the trainee Iraqi in the tower whose job is it to take ninety seconds to tell us that we are cleared to land, having forgotten to call him through 4000 as usual because the numbers on the altimeter were a bit blurred still. The VSI needle has finally unpegged itself and the new hostie is now shaking like a constipated dog ****ting on a sheet of ice.
Ignoring the GPWS whose CB the engineer forgot to pull I grab a fistful of Rolls Royce and stabilize at 300’ still in a 45 deg bank on base, pulling back on the yoke just enough to hear the business-class pax start to grunt. Turning the aircraft onto the runway heading over brick one of 33R, the engineer finally wakes from his slumber. I flare and as soon as we roll out of the turn, I land. Some aeronautical genius coined this manoeuvre “Short Finals."
I look over at the F/O and he's getting his wallet out already – the whiskey is only $10 a litre here. Looking further back at the new hostie I can clearly see her face regaining a bit of colour again. In fact her cheeks are redder than Monica Lewinski’s knees. I wonder why but then notice the wet spot spreading around her feet. Finally, I glance at our steely-eyed Engineer. His eyebrows rise in unison as a grin forms on his face. I can tell he's thinking the same thing I am. Are we going to be able to diddle the fuel man again?
”Where do we find such stalwart comrades?” Naturally, and not at all surprisingly, I take the first turnoff at 90 knots, destroying all the crockery in the trolleys and deeply unimpressing the new hostie. That’s my chances out the window then. Bloody bumpy taxiways….. The comparatively small, 33 ton, bouncing cacophony of groans comes to a lurching stop with the radome less than one foot from the marshal’s nose. Let's see a Jumbo do that! We notice that he’s the one we suspect of pinching the cellphone last week so we turn the radar back on. Keeping one engine on because the APU is u/s, it's time to let the quivering pax unload themselves. As they finish staggering down the stairs I shoot down the back to see if they’ve left any English newspapers lying around, and of course, have a slash in the smelly chemical loo.
Walking down the crew entry steps savouring the fume-laden 46 degree celcius Baghdad air, dull thuds in the background, with my lowest-bidder Browning 9 mm stowed safely back in Johannesburg under my pillow, I look around and thank God, not Allah, I'm not on a Nigeria contract. Then I curse God that I'm not living in Sydney, flying for Virgin, lying on a beach 10 000 miles away with two chicks on each arm.
Knowing that once again I've cheated death-by-boredom, I ask myself, "What in the hell am I doing in this mess? Is it Duty, Honor, and Country?” No, it’s the double S&T allowance. Or the fact that the alternative is somewhere in West Africa. But now is not the time to derive the complexities of the superior cerebral properties of the human portion of the aviator-man-contractor model. It is however, soon time to get out of this ****-hole.
"Hey, is the fuel truck here yet?” “No, its still on the other side of the field filling those *^%*ing Hercs.” Meantime I curse the APU for the fortieth time today and try and signal the Iraqi ground-handlers through the thick black smoke emanating from their forklift to push the unserviceable pickup truck with the barely serviceable Copco starter on its back into position next to us, and then to get the pushback tug out to jumpstart the Copco so we can get the airstart we need...
God, I love this contract!