I have read all this thread over the last week and wanted to share with you some of my adventures ...
You know you are in Africa when ...
... inbound to land at the capital city airport, you call in in French over the radio but nobody replies. You can hear another inbound airliner from Belgium calling also in French, greeted back in French by the controller.
You insist one more time in French and still receive no other reply. Then you start to call the tower in English, and you immediatly get a reply, in French of course ...
... on finals to another capital airport, you are established 10 miles final when the local air force Sukhois take-off at counter QFU and start slowly climbing still in the axis of the runway straight at you, loaded with bomb and stuff. You don't need to worry about any RA on the TCAS since they fly without transponder ...
... in the aforementioned airport, you wait 20 minutes at the holding point because the "contractors" actually flying the Sukhois on behalf of the locals are calling their bank over the satellite phone to check if they have been paid. You subsequently know they haven't been paid when they finally taxi back to the apron.
... the 40+ dogs living at the end of the runway are actually more civilized than most of the villagers living around. At least, the dogs leave the runway when you come in.
... on a mission on behalf of the local governement to drop food supplies to a remote location, you are asked to take with you one of the colonel of the army (actually beeing 25 years old or something) in order to ensure that you will not drop rebels and start an invasion.
... on one of the remote airfield, the most efficient loadmaster you've met was actually a 14 years old boy.
The followings have already been said in previous posts, but it still feels good to share them :
... you can cross 3 countries and do 5 hours of flight without managing to get one enroute controller over the radio.
... the controler advises of inbound traffic once you have actually crossed it and deconflicted each other between gentlemen using the TCAS and 126.9.
Keep this thread alive guys !
Can't wait to fly there again
