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Cairo West, Egyptian Air Force Base, Friday, 1995-11-17 12:30 local (Z+2)
I'm sitting in the cockpit here waiting for 14:00 local time so we can take off. The Egyptians have a rule here that you have to file your flight plan at least 3 hours before your departure, and Tower dispatch for some reason couldn't file from New York. We had to do it ourselves, and we filed it at 10:00 local.
We're here to pick up a bunch of air force types (400+) that have been on joint maneuvers with the Egyptian Air Force. At the moment there are more U.S. planes on the base than there are Egyptian planes. From the cockpit I can see a B1 and a couple of dozen F-15s parked to the left of us, a couple of AWACS (essentially Boeing 707s to the right of us, Egyptian F4s way left and a little behind, and Egyptian Hawkeyes in back of us and to the right.
There are bunkers all over the place, some of them very large and with huge blast doors. Other than that it's mostly sand, very little vegetation. This is strictly a military field. There are no civilian enroute navigational aides. We were vectored into the area by Cairo Approach Control, but we had to find the airport visually by ourselves. That turned out to be interesting. A lot of confusion. The Egyptians can't understand us, we can't understand them, and the base is relatively well camouflaged (anti-aircraft guns and surface to air missile emplacements under some of the camouflage). Anyway, it was hard to find, especially in the continual haze that surrounds Cairo.
I'm tired. I've now been on duty for 26 hours. Duty time will probably hit 34 to 36 hours by the time we reach Paris. We're supposed to be on the ground there for 17 hours. I intend to sleep as much of it as possible. I was going to try and get some sleep while we're waiting here, but it has turned out to be impossible. A 747 is a novelty here, and we've had a constant stream of both Egyptian and U.S. military pilots coming on board wanting to visit the cockpit. It's slowed down a little now.
We also had trouble enroute. Tower dispatch screwed up and gave us a flight plan that said we could not enter Greek airspace because the Greeks had canceled the necessary diplomatic clearance that we needed to be operating under a military call sign. They intended to route us around Greek airspace. Doing that they violated a bunch of directional and arrival restrictions for the Mediterranean and, in spite of all that, still put us through a corner of Greek airspace. The Italian controllers said they could help us out but would have to put us through Libyan airspace, a definite no no for a U.S. airplane, especially a U.S. military charter. We elected to go through Greek airspace. After all, Tower regularly goes to Athens. However, the last words the Italian controller gave us was a warning that we might be intercepted by the Greek Air Force. That's kind of laughable. They probably couldn't find us, probably couldn't catch us even if they found us, and the worst that would happen would be having to land at Athens until everything was sorted out. Anyway, we sailed into Greek airspace without the necessary diplomatic clearance. They didn't say a thing. I really wonder about Tower's dispatch department. Problems will happen, but they happen a lot more often in Tower dispatch than they ever did in Evergreen dispatch. Oh, well.
Since the last message, we've gone from Split to Bombay (had to make a refueling stop at Cairo International), overnighted there then returned to Split, then came here. In a little bit, we'll leave for Paris Orly. I'll be able to send the accumulated messages and call C.J. I'll also check my total time in the last 30 days when we get there. It will be close as to whether I will be legal to operate to JFK, and if I can, I won't be legal after I reach JFK tomorrow evening. I'm expecting them to hold me there for a simulator check, but then I WILL get to go home.
There were a number of things I wanted to relate, but I've forgotten most of them. One that sticks in my mind is that the day we came Paris to Delhi to Bombay was probably the most successful day I've had with Tower insofar as my performance is concerned. The captain I'm with likes to do things by the day instead of by the leg. That was my day, so I flew both legs, and I was having a good day. Two greasers in a row. Unfortunately on the return to Bombay night before last my greasing string was broken. It was a mild thump. Such is life.
I may have to quit here in a moment, they're bringing drug sniffing dogs on board the aircraft and they're telling everybody to get off the aircraft. I plan to stay on. My little protest against the insane drug war. However, it's also time to go load the INSs.
The order for everyone to leave the aircraft wasn't enforceable for civilians, and the entire crew elected to stay on board. Nobody wanted to go stand in the hot sun. That was a wise decision given what happened next. Shortly after the dogs and their handlers came on board, the Egyptian military took the airstairs away. One of their generals was inbound, and they wanted the stairs to be ready to roll up to his aircraft the minute it parked. As I remember, the stairs weren't returned for around three hours. We were furious, but there was nothing we could do. At least we were inside the airplane with the APU running and had air conditioning. The line of American troops already waiting to board were left to roast in the sun.
Another problem was that removing the stairs left the drug dogs and handlers stranded on the airplane. The possibility of bringing a forklift to the airplane and getting them off that way was discussed, but one of the handlers said that for his dog that wasn't an option. I had noticed that that dog and handler were sitting apart from the others in a side row with the handler in the window seat. When I walked past the row, the dog lunged at me, growling and barking in full attack mode. The handler had him on a short leash, so the dog never got close to me. Later the handler apologized and explained that the dog, a big German shepherd, was old and had become aggressive, even attacking the handler on occasion. He was due to be put down at the end of their tour of duty, a few weeks from then.
Tower's aircraft were state-of-the-art insofar as navigational equipment when they were built in the 1970s and early 1980s. By 1995 that was no longer true. They had no flight management system. Navigation was by Delco Carousel triple INS (Inertial Navigation System) platforms. My reference to “time to go load the INSs” was because one of the first officer's jobs was to load them with the lat/long coordinates for the first waypoints from our paper flight plans. There was memory for only ten waypoints. As a flight progressed, it was the non-flying pilot's task to keep the ongoing waypoints loaded into the system. Reroutes from the flight plan were a pain in the ass. You had to manually find the lat/long coordinates of each new waypoint on a paper enroute map and key them in. A reroute in the North Atlantic track system mean the controlling authority had to read you the new coordinates over the radio, which, if you were beyond VHF line-of-sight, meant you'd have to get them over HF radio. We had no SATCOM.
Later...Terry
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