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A little trip to Cyprus

It all started on a Thursday.

A simple transit from St Mawgan to Naples. The transit wasuneventful apart from falling out of the Airway and getting vectors from FrenchAir Traffic Control because the two Navigators couldn’t agree which way to turnto regain the centre line.

As we approached Napoli the visibility was given as 5km inhaze so we elected for radar control and descended below safety altitudeavoiding Vesuvius. As we were settled at 1500ft downwind the controller said ‘Welosing power, shutting down, you go away, goodbye’. Somewhat surprised Iinitiated a climb and turn away from the volcano while we looked at ouroptions. We elected to divert to Deccimomanou our specified alternate and somefurious calculations were carried out in the back.

At this point a voice said ‘hey we back you try again?’ sowe placed ourselves in their hands for radar vectors to an offset ILS approach.The airfield is in the middle of an industrial estate, visibility was poor andthe airfield lights were not on! At 500ft he said ‘you gonna land?’ to which Ireplied that I couldn’t see the runway, his response was ‘OK you carry on’ Atdecision height I saw the runway in my 10 o’clock and with a call of ‘landing’I did a dirty dart onto the ground.

We were handled by the US Navy and the following morning ourstarter crew was a 6’ 6” matelot, the start was uneventful but then it came toclosing the door. As you are aware the door is closed from the outside, thisaircraft was just back from a major and the door was a tight fit. In order tohelp, our jolly matelot put his shoulder into it and after 30 minutes we stillhadn’t closed. We finally worked out that because of his height, as he pushedhe straightened the door and prevented it engaging, once we got him to stoopall was well. We taxied just in time to stop them cancelling our clearance. Ismiled as I held for take-off as I saw an Italian aircraft coming in from thesame position as I had the day before and performing the same dive to land.

We took off straight into a flock of birds, we didn’t appearto have a strike and all indications were normal so we set off for Cyprus. Onlanding the ground crew pointed out a smear on the nose. We had two choices:spend several hours filling in paperwork or wash it off and go to the bar…wellthere didn’t appear to be any damage.



Monday morning, crew in start-up and off to Naples. As werounded the toe of Italy I got an update of Naples weather with 2km visibility.Given the situation on the previous Thursday I elected to divert to Rome whichhad much better weather. On the approach to Ciampino it says ’avoid overflyingthe Vatican’ but it doesn’t tell you where it is! After landing Tom and Irefuelled the aircraft while Bob contacted the Air Attache at the Embassy whoorganised a hotel for us. We then had difficulty leaving the airport, it wasjoint civil/military and we were not Italian Air Force so couldn’t leavethrough that side and we were neither airline passengers nor crew. After beingsent backwards and forwards several times it got too difficult and they threwus out.

Tuesday morning we returned to the airport, I should pointout that the airliners were parked in front of the small terminal and theItalian Air Force VIP transports were on a small pad near the bar. We wereparked in the middle of a 100 yard square pan on our own like a leper. Tom wasleft to load the luggage while Bob and I went to Air Traffic to check the Metand file the flight plan. After 20 minutes we returned to the pan to be met byan armoured car and armed troops at 3 foot intervals surrounding the wholearea. It was with some trepidation and a jaunty ‘buonjourno’ that we steppedthrough the cordon to our aircraft with hundreds of pairs of eyes watching us.Tom was sitting in the cockpit reading a book and had not seen the assembly. Wedecided to carry on as normal and agreed to meet in the bar for a coffee andround up some ground crew along the way. Tom set off for the bar while Bob andI went back to Air Traffic to complete the paperwork. Fifteen minutes later wewalked back out and the guard had gone, but sitting next to our dirty grey andgreen Canberra was a big shiny bird with ‘United States of America’ emblazonedon the side. It seems that Cyrus Vance, the Secretary of State was visiting andthe guards were for him not us.

In the bar, which served alcohol as well as coffee we founda crew chief who allocated a man for our starter crew. We explained that heneeded a fire extinguisher and how to close the door. He brought a big red fireengine, but we didn’t complain. He and Tom stood out the front while we did theengine starts, he obviously was not familiar with cartridge starts because whenthe smoke cleared he was legging it away into the distance. When he realisedthat this was normal he sheepishly ambled back to position. He successfullyclosed the door and we returned to St Mawgan via Manston due to fuel and windconstraints.