enroute Manchester, England to Orlando, Florida, Friday, 1997-08-22 22:00Z
We're over the North Atlantic, about 59 degrees north latitude, 30 degrees west longitude. 30 degrees west longitude is where we switch from being controlled by Shannon, Ireland to Gander, Canada. It's my leg, so the other guy is doing the radio work.
I'm having a hard time staying awake, having been up for 22 hours now, and I'm probably 11 to 12 hours from getting to a bed. It wasn't supposed to happen this way, but this is the Tower way. I was supposed to deadhead—and sleep—on Tower's Paris to New York flight and be in New York by now, but just as I was about to walk out the door, the phone call came sending us to Manchester, England via Air France to pick up a subservice for Leisure Air, a British tour carrier. So now we're enroute to Orlando, Florida—flight time 9 hours, 18 minutes. We were 4 hours late getting out of Manchester—sigh—due to crew scheduling not having lined up enough flight attendants soon enough for the trip. A 747 has to have a minimum of 11 flight attendants—14 is the usual amount—and we only had 8 with us. Somewhere they got ahold of 3 more and got them to Manchester, finally.
The interesting part of this trip started with a leg from JFK to Tel Aviv. Due to a change in procedures at Tel Aviv, I went through that part of the terminal at Tel Aviv where the general public meets arrivals. Previously, we went directly from the customs/immigration area to a waiting crew van. Anyway, I had heard about the security in that area, and since we had to stand around and wait there for awhile, I took the opportunity to look around, especially since I would like to write another novel and I can always use grist for that.
The area is a large triangle. One of the sides of the triangle has 5 large, dark windows that appear to be made of plastic. Those windows allow surveillance of the entire area except for one corner, and that corner can be seen from a single window of the same type on another leg of the triangle. From what we're told, there are snipers behind those windows with orders to kill on-sight anyone seen with a lethal weapon—shoot first, ask questions later.
We stay at the Sheraton in Tel Aviv, and for the first time since I've been going there, the main door was blocked off, and all entering and leaving guests have to go through a security gate.
Our original schedule called for three days in Tel Aviv, but that got changed to a trip to Mombasa, Kenya. Kenya is primarily a Muslim country, so Tower couldn't get permission to fly directly from Tel Aviv to Mombasa. That forced a stop in Cairo just to satisfy the religious fanatics.
The political situation in Kenya is unstable. CNN reported 100 people killed by government troops putting down a riot the day before we left. The consensus seems to be that they are on the brink of a civil war. If that happens, it will destroy the country's economy since tourism is their biggest industry. At the moment the tourists are still coming, but people are beginning to get nervous. A mechanic for another airline was staying at the hotel we were at, and he requested a police escort to get him from the hotel to the airport since he had to drive it alone in a rental car at 04:00 in the morning—still dark of course—and they're starting to have cars hijacked as civil order breaks down.
We had no trouble whatsoever and saw no evidence of trouble, but we had a couple of wild rides in a bus. The roads are terrible, but the beaches in Mombasa are lined with luxury resort hotels. We hit the hotel about 04:00 in the morning. I went out on the balcony of my room for just a few minutes and wound up sitting there for an hour watching the surf in the moonlight. I then slept about 7 hours then walked on the beach for a couple of hours. C.J., they have hawkers just as in Bali/Lombok but they're not as aggressive. They ask only once and graciously take a single “no” for an answer.
The flight from Mombasa to Paris—another crew took it on to New York—was for the IOM, the International Organization for Migration, a U.N. agency. The passengers were Somalian refugees that will be settled in the U.S. Somalia is immediately north of Kenya.
These refugees looked pretty good, reasonably well dressed, and some spoke English. I talked to our purser, who had done 3 previous flights like this, and she said those previous loads have been people who were not well dressed or literate. On her immediately previous flight, they had had to put up with things like pubescent girls bleeding because they had recently been circumcised, female circumcision being common in this part of the world.
We had one medical problem during the flight. A 4 year old girl with a heart condition had to be put on oxygen. The refugees were accompanied by 2 doctors and 2 nurses—IOM employees—so they handled the situation.
Well, the turbulence is getting bad, so it's time to quit.
Later...Terry