Kandahar Runway
What a load of rubbish about Kandahar runway being too short - too short for what?
In the mid 90s we used to regularly fly both a G-III & a G-IV into Kandahar taking Gulf state VIPs there to hunt houbara.
At cruise height and approaching the Pakistan airspace boundary we called Kandahar ATC on HF. The sole ATC person immediately replied on a car battery driven HF set ... "cleared to land".
Some 20-30 minutes or so later having descended we scouted the area for the resident Migs - do it yourself ATC - then landed on the 6,000 feet or longer runway. (Memory fades and no Jeppeson to hand.)
The Afghani English speaking ATC chap was always very helpful and operated from the semi derelict tower close to the sometime beautiful air terminal. The arching building had perhaps 90% of the windows broken or missing and no passenger traffic.
Occasionally the resident Mig pilots came to see our aircraft and showed great interest in the G-IV glass cockpit. Plenty of common aviation gesticulations were observed and made but language was a major problem. Coffee and a few cakes & sandwiches from our hosties ensured that all were happy!
The Afghan Migs regularly flew in and out OK and enjoyed flying low over our parked aircraft. There were battle wrecked Russian 4 jets all over the airfield, some within yards of the taxiways, but the airfield was quite useable.
However, on one departure we saw several men who had been painting the white centre line markings move off the runway as they heard and saw us taxying. On the take off roll at 120 kts or so we came across paint buckets and planks left on the runway in the ready to paint positions ... a little shift to the left half width of the runway and we were on our way to Quetta to pick up fuel and some pax. (A 'pairs' take-off without the other aircraft.)
PS 2008 - Google now lists and shows runway as 05/23 10,500' x 148' asphalt and at 3,317' amsl
Last edited by curvedsky; 5th Jan 2009 at 16:57.
Reason: added a missing 'nought' to 6,000 foot runway