For the first time in my life passengers were on time, slightly in advance, door closed and everything was great ! weather was good no sequence at all on take off!!! i asked for start at 16.30 gmt....
"vnukovo ground ***412 infotmation K from Vnukovo 3 request start up clearence!"
reply:" **412 vnukovo ground STAND BY"
i thought everything was good and in one or two minutes i would have been cleared for start but....
at 16.40 i tried again my request, answer was still" STAND BY"
after 20 minutes my passengers became to get nervous and one of the came in the cockpit to ask what was going on...
i called on ground frequency again to get an estimate! reply:"STAND BY!"
in the mean time several pilots from Vnukovo 3 asked for start...
big mess! no departure, no take off, the airport seemed to be closed, i decided to call the handling agent!
"big problem sir! there will be a departing government flight, they don't know about the delay expected!"
no problem, i thought, i'm on ground, i have a lot of fuel, i can stay with my apu in my warm cockpit but what about the guy coming from europe with a small bizjet who is holding over somewhereNDB runnin short of fuel? because you have to know that there were no notams concerning that...
i guess they didn't asked themselves...anyway after one hour i tried again, and my voice that time was a little bit louder...
"***412 REQUEST AN ESTIMATE FOR START"
"***412 Vnukovo Ground (because you can tell everything about russian ATC but they are very precisely concerning call outs) STAND BY!!"
There is a special raccomandation for GA pilots: it's 3C CALM, COOL,COLLABORATIVE...
TRY THAT IN VNUKOVO IF YOU CAN...
i insisted" My passengers need to know at what time we can leave, pleeeeeaaaase!"
"*** 412 vnukovo ground, expect start in two three
(2\3) minutes.."
after 5 minutes i asked again....
reply:"***412 vnukovo ground, i said two three, 23 twenty three!!!"
ok, no problem guy, let's do that! calm, cool, collaborative but in the meantime my boss came up to me and said that was crazy and he were supposed to be in rome at a certain time and was incredible that we could not have an estimate and bla, bla, bla...a lot of money for that flight...we are in 2008...men on moon...tried to stay cool but i think it did't work so good but....
In the mean time i saw a 330 coming from the military parking and going down the runway very, very, very slowly!!! it seemd that there were hundreds eggs on the runway, he did a very good back track and once cleared for take off he desappeared in the clouds still very very very slowly....
it was tha man!!!
it was the government flight!!
now let's go!!!
but...
burn of hell!! hundreds of airliners appeared after the corner and a sequence of many many many planes were before us...vnukovo 3 was dismissed until even Vodkalemonandiceairlines was in flight!
my take off was two hours after my start up request...
carry on a lot of fuel next time you fly to vnukovo and always remember...
CALM
COOL
COLLABORATIVE
(if you can!!)
