Caravans Rock
I did a C208 rating about 18 months ago with the view to getting a job in Tanzania flying the same on RPT around the place and had been sent a very convincing offer to do so. The rating was the most fun I have had in a long, long time, stalling over the Cook Strait and assessing glide performance were a hoot, just like our Wellington arrival . It was bitterly cold (it snowed in Upper Hutt that night) and had a howling gale in Wellington all weekend that I thought may keep us on the ground but it did not.
To cut a long story short my job in Tanzania did not work out and I ended up back in Sudan again flying my crusty old LET 410 (another brilliant and indestructible machine!). The time came to leave Sudan and come home to New Zealand but there was no vehicle available to take me to the local 'airport' (Rumbek) some 60 km away from where we were based and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth on my part as to how I would escape this part of the world (it was not the first time that this had happened). On the 2nd last sortie of my final day we landed in the LET 410 at our home base and I spotted a Caravan parked on the hospital apron next to our camp (I think 5Y-XLP was the registration). I immediately cornered our loadmaster and sent him down to the hospital to find out where this machine was going to next. He returned saying that it would return to Kenya, transfer it's pax and load onto another Caravan to Nairobi and that the head of the American mission had offered me the last remaining seat on this aircraft free of charge! So I eventually got a ride on a Caravan in the very last row of seats and had a most comfortable journey back to Nairobi along with my 50kg of baggage that would have been hit hard by the commercial operator I was supposed to depart on for excess baggage charges. I also managed to clear customs in Lokichoggio who cleared me and our broken weather radar with no hassle at all resulting in no duty charges at Nairobi and a very happy boss who met me...
RPP