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Taj Residency Hotel, Bangalore, Wednesday, 1999-03-10 15:00 local (Z+5:30)
Greetings from Bangalore, or, as our depraved pilot group calls it, Bang-a-whore. Actually, I doubt it's any more deserving of that judgement than any other Indian city.
Bangalore is a city to which I had not previously been, and one which I would prefer not visiting again. However, chances are I'll be back before the end of this Hajj.
It was probably beautiful once. In fact, when I woke up this morning and looked out the window from this fifth floor room, I saw a lovely looking lake several blocks away. Things often look better from a distance. Up close the lake looks bad, smells bad, is bad. The smell comes from floating sewage. How do I know it's sewage—at least some of it—because I observed an Indian man making a deposit. At first I thought he was just trying to clear some of the scum from the surface with this hands for some unknown reason, but then I realized he was wetting just one hand to clean his bare ass. The freshly made pie below his butt was half-in, half-out of the water.
The lake wasn't just a large toilet, though. Numerous two-person kayaks were out on the water. Two of them cruised past the man cleaning himself. Every time I've used kayak paddles—you know, the kind with a blade on both ends—a fair amount of water ran along the middle part and wound up in my lap. Oh, well, Indians have strong immune systems.
Gross, you say. What a crude way to start a message. True, but it effectively describes Bangalore as I have thus far seen it, and as far as I will probably ever see it.
The Bangalore airport's elevation is 3,000 feet. It has a single, short runway—for a 747—and no taxiway paralleling the length of runway. When a 747 lands, it all but closes the airport for other operations. You can't turn around on the runway except by using widened portions at each end. Then you taxi back along the runway to one of two ninety degree taxiways that lead to opposite ends of a short, parallel taxiway that widens out to a ramp at the center. The ramps's not big enough for a 747 to turn around, so they usually park us on the taxiway. A 747 can nose into the ramp, but it then occupies three parking spaces for airliners of the size that normally come here, and it has to be pushed back by a tug. 747s land here only during the Hajj.
The mosquitoes are bad here, but not as bad as in Calcutta I am told. So far I have lucked out and have not had to go to Calcutta. The first crews into both Bangalore and Calcutta returned with the advice that we should bring our own bug spray and mosquito repellant, and we have. All of us have bought a German-made repellant called Assitan, and it seems to work. The only bites I got were on places I had not adequately covered.
Indian-accented English can be difficult to understand, and Bangalore-accented English is particularly difficult. Most of the time none of the three of us can understand here, on the first try, what has been said. The confusion was particularly bad while we were approaching for last night's landing. Prevailing winds make runway 28 (magnetic heading 280—landing to the west) their usual runway, and it has an ILS (instrument landing system). However, last night the winds were out of the east and dictated landing the opposite direction on runway 10 (magnetic heading 100 degrees). We were able to understand that the runway in use was runway 10, but that was all. The remainder of their transmissions were unintelligible, and we finally transmitted that we understood runway 10, couldn't understand the rest, but that we would land on runway 10—the weather was good and we could clearly see the airport. This obviously upset them, but we couldn't understand why. I was flying the leg; the first officer was doing the radio work, and the runway was fast approaching. About two miles from touchdown we finally figured it out. They were telling us the PAPI wasn't working and were asking what we wanted to do.
The whole thing was a classic case of language problems being exacerbated by the way national cultures handle aviation-related problems. First, foreign pilots come to rely on a relatively common vocabulary. In this instance we weren't “hearing” PAPI. PAPI is a type of visual approach slope indicator not used in the United States. We use VASI (visual approach slope indicator), and we would expect to hear, “VASI inoperative,” if that is the case and they bothered to tell us, which they usually wouldn't because U.S. pilots don't care about that. Both PAPI and VASI are sets of lights off to the side of the approach end of a runway. If you are too low, they all appear red, if too high, all are white. If you're on the glidepath, half are red and half are white.
Pilots in countries that do not have a large general aviation segment are at a major disadvantage if they do not have some kind of aid to tell them where they are relative to the glidepath. Pilots in countries where general aviation is a major force don't need such an aid because they're used to simply looking at a runway and landing, judging their glidepath by the runway perspective in the windshield. To an Indian controller, the idea of landing a 747 without an approach aid is most unusual, and he was genuinely concerned. When we finally understood, we told him it was no problem, we didn't need it, and he immediately cleared us to land.
When it comes to me, personally, VASIs and PAPIs are particularly useless because they depend on color perception, and my color-deficient eyes don't see the difference until I'm too close for the information to be of any real help.
Time to go to bed and get ready for tonight's all night operation back to Jeddah.
Terry
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