JW411
During my time on 105 the direct (5 hr) Khormaksar - Muharraq passenger schedule that overflew Saudi Arabia was an all day affair. The extended turnaround allowed enough time to grab a taxi to the Manama fish Market and buy ten pounds of big juicy prawns. As they were uncooked Paddy Whelan, my loadmaster, boiled them all in the hot cup on the way home, otherwise they would have gone off! The smell in the cabin was most embarrassing!
I had a strange experience on one return flight. It was dark when we left Bahrain passing over Doha in the climb to flight level 200. The sky was clear and the stars were twinkling brightly. At around FL150 we ran into severe clear air turbulence, it only lasted a few minutes, but was very choppy. Once we levelled off the navigator set up his sextant to take a TOC fix.
"I can't see any stars," he exclaimed.
"They were up there a few minutes ago," I responded, leaning closer to the windscreen. Sure enough the sky was pitch black, while down below a multitude of lights stretched along the Qatar peninsular as far as the eye could see. The pattern of lights was vaguely familiar, much like the stars. Surreptitiously, I lifted my cigarette packet, which was lying on my cup holder, and dropped it to confirm we were the right way up!
A few minutes later we ran into another short spell of turbulence. At the same time the galaxy of lights sitting on the desert slowly rose to their rightful place in the sky.
I visited the Met Office at Khormaksar the following day and described the experience. Apparently, warm air from the Saudi desert funnels down the Qatar Peninsular, lying above the cooler gulf air and causing a powerful inversions. The resulting refraction would explain the star phenomenon.