An EOD bloke I know was babysitting a load of explosives on an contracted AN12 for the Norwegian Army from Oslo to KAIA. (riding jumpseat)
The guy has an CPL back home, and he allmost **** himself when he realized that they where navigating on a handheld Garmin 90 when they entered Afgan airspace.. Worse things have happended, you might say, but due to weather, they had to divert to Bagram. The crazy "pilots" in the AN12 flew a home made approach on the G90 into Bagram (and emmerged from cloud at approx 500ft AGL), in IMC! In fact 2 minutes later a BAF Herc went missed due to weather on a tacan approach.
Once on the ground, they (pilots) tought that refueling and unloading the exp. pallets at the same time was a good idea.(!) The samme pallets my buddy had to force them to tie down back in Oslo, the loadmaster (and I use the therm loosly) figured that they where so heavy, that they would not move.......
My buddy did not look forward to the return trip.........
Contracting out to the lowest bidder has it's perks........
