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Regal Kowloon Hotel, Hong Kong, Thursday, 1997-09-25 05:00 local (Z+8)
Hello again, Everybody,
I just woke up from sleeping 13 hours. I finally feel decent again for the first time since arriving in Hong Kong. This means I'll have 24 hours of normalcy as we're scheduled to depart about 24 hours from now. That schedule calls for me to operate through Khabarovsk to Anchorage and then commercial/deadhead to Miami—which is exactly 12 hours time difference from Hong Kong and will again throw my body into a loop. I should have 24 hours in Miami before I have to go in for the required once-every-six-months simulator check. I'll spend most of that time sleeping, the rest studying.
I forgot to mention an incident in Anchorage that illustrates the folly of Tower's policies, of being penny-wise and pound-foolish. Tower employs only enough ground staff to just barely do a minimal job, and that includes mechanics. Thus the airplanes are maintained enough to meet legal requirements and to keep them flying, but that's all.
One of the items that are not kept up to snuff are the airplane gauges that tell those servicing the lavatories how much of the blue toilet liquid they've pumped into the lavs. There are two lav servicing ports, one forward and one aft, with a gauge at each port. The servicing procedure is to dump the lavs into the servicing truck and then pump fresh liquid into each lav system. If the airplane's gauges don't work, the ground servicers know, usually, how much should go in each type of airplane and use metering gauges on the truck to pump in the required amount.
However, a freighter has had all lavs removed except the one upper deck lav. If the airplane's gauges work, that's not a problem. The servicer pumps only until the gauge says full. However, if the airplane's gauges don't work and the servicer is a new employee that doesn't realize freighters don't take as much as passenger aircraft, you have a potential problem.
That was the situation and, as fate would have it, I was the one that first noticed the lav flooding on to the upper deck floor. I made good time down the ladder to the main deck and then down the stairs to the ground, yelling the whole time to stop pumping. Unfortunately, the guy pumping the stuff had his full protective gear on including ear plugs. He didn't stop pumping until I got in front of him so he could see my cut signal.
By this time the fluid—it's mildly corrosive by the way, intended to dissolve small, brown, organic objects—was running through the upper deck ladder opening onto the main deck, and from there seeping down into the lower deck compartment that contains most of the electronic equipment.
The initial cost of the mishap was about an hour of our delay. The later and more expensive cost will come as the liquid that didn't get soaked up by the cleaners attacks the cannon plugs connecting the electronics boxes...but Tower never learns.
Back to Khabarovsk. An American outfit called DynAir does the ground handling there. They employ Russian workers, but they have one American there for coordination with the crews. We asked him what the city was like. The following paragraph is what he related:
Going into the city is like going back into the 1920s, because that's when the downtown area stopped evolving. It seems that this part of Russia was the last to be conquered by the Red Army. The Bolshevik Revolution was in 1917, but the Red Army didn't reach Khabarovsk until the mid 1920s. Until that time it was under the control of a White Army (read Royalists?) that included many Czechoslovakians (who, after it was conquered, couldn't get back to Czechoslovakia so they stayed) and even some Americans. The people are friendly, but the area is terribly impoverished.
He also mentioned that at some point in all that, the Japanese controlled the area for awhile.
Okay, on to Hong Kong and some explanation. The Hong Kong airport has only one runway and has a one-of-a-kind instrument approach to one end of that runway. They call it the IGS system (Instrument Guidance System). It's actually an ILS (Instrument Landing System) but unlike a regular ILS, it doesn't line up with the runway. It brings you in at a 47 degree angle to the runway. At the last minute you have to pick up some lead-in lights and make a right turn 47° heading change to align yourself with the runway. Most pilots hate it. I have always thought it was kind of fun, but that's probably because we used to do it a lot at Evergreen and got used to it.
There's a visual aid called “the checkerboards”, a couple of big rock and concrete faces with red and white checkerboard patterns painted on them and well lit at night. Once you visually acquire the checkerboards, it's best to head toward them, abandoning the IGS for lateral guidance. Driving towards them, evening holding a little left of them, allows you more time to align with the runway. Then, when you get over the lead-in lights, following them—initially a little to the outside of their curve—allows you to easily arrive at the runway threshold aligned and at the proper altitude.
The weather coming in was good. We had the checkerboards way out, and I kept hinting that they were a little off to our left, but the Captain (his leg) didn't take the hint. When he turned inside of the lead-in lights, I knew it would be interesting. I pointed out that he was cutting the corner, but he didn't respond. Consequently, we arrived over the runway threshold high and still maneuvering for alignment. He finally got it down about a thousand feet beyond the landing zone and then had to really pile on the brakes and the reverse thrust.
I set up that same scenario in Wrongful Act to produce some blown tires. Fortunately our situation was not that bad. All we got were some very hot brakes.
A couple of years ago a China Airlines captain really did it in a brand new 747-400. He went off the end of the runway into Victoria Bay. The aircraft sat in the water with its tail sticking up and preventing the runway from being used. They dynamited it to blow the tail off so they could reopen the runway.
Hong Kong doesn't quite have the bustle it used to have. Tourism is way down, a reaction to the Chinese Communist takeover. Hong Kong is now a “Special Administrative Region” within the Chinese mainland government. Li Peng, the number 2 man in Beijing's government was in town when we arrived.
Who knows what will eventually happen. Many predict the outcome will be that China will become like Hong Kong rather than vice versa. There are many who believe that China will become the world's preeminent power in the coming century, passing the U.S. at mid-century.
For crewmembers, nothing has yet changed. They waved us through customs.
What has changed, and not as a result of the Communist takeover but just economics, is that Hong Kong is no longer a shopper's paradise. It has become very expensive. I paid the equivalent of $6 US for a chocolate milkshake yesterday.
That milkshake was the last food I had yesterday (about 14:00). I succeeded in evading the nightly eating orgy organized by the Captain—slept right through it. So, a shower and off to breakfast, paid for by the company, and it's a really good breakfast at this hotel.
Take care, everyone...Terry
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