over the Mediterranean, Wednesday, 1999-02-17 20:00 local (Z+2)
Greetings, All,
I'm in the back of one of Tower's 74s being ferried to Jeddah to start flying for Air India on the Hajj. India is, of course, primarily a Hindu country. However, they have enough of a Muslim population that they run special Hajj flights. We'll be based in Jeddah, supposedly, and will be getting our passengers out of Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta, and Chennai. For those of you who haven't kept up with Indian politics, Mumbai used to be called Bombay; Chennai used to be called Madras.
Since this is a ferry flight, there are no passengers on board, just Tower employees, six full 747 crews plus support people, all told about 150 people. The cockpit crews beat the flight attendants and others to the airplane, so we have the best accommodations—a middle row of five seats for each. I “went to bed” right after takeoff and stayed down for about eight hours. It's an eleven hour flight; we've got about an hour to go.
Due to a Tower screw-up, most of us don't have Saudi visas. In theory they have arranged for that to be taken care of when we get there. Will it? Who knows. The same people who have assured us of that were the ones responsible for the screw-up. There is some possibility, probably small, the some of us will be refused entry and will have to be commercialled back out of the country. If so, I hope I'm one of them. To that end, I have written “none” on the visa application space asking for my religion. That's a truthful response, but it used to be grounds for visa denial in Saudi. Hopefully it still will be. However, the ground handlers will probably catch it, white it out, and write Christian. But it's worth a try!
If I get in, I will be stuck here until sometime in March, possibly late in March. The flights will be “turns”, i.e. we'll fly from Jeddah to an Indian city, load up, and return to Jeddah. That's legally possible because India is close enough to Saudi Arabia that the round trips are less than twelve hours flight time.
One of the problems of laying over only in Jeddah is that logging on to the Internet requires a long distance phone call to the nearest country—in terms of telephone costs—that allows Internet access. Bahrain or Egypt will probably be my best bet. Actually, Saudi Arabia just announced a week ago that they are going to allow Internet access from within the country. However, that's obviously not enough time for the local access to have been set up.
So, I don't know when I'm going to be able to send this. I'll get it done, but it may be a hassle and will certainly be expensive. In addition to the country problem, there's the fact that none of the hotels are set up for modem usage, and I forgot to bring my little telephone butchering kit. However, there are Radio Shacks in Jeddah selling the necessary items should the hotel telephone system not be modem friendly.
I am the oldest person on the airplane. None of the captains on board will retire before I (I is correct there isn't it? You can't say “before me do.”). One of them, Bob Hollis, C.J. knows him, will retire a few months after I do. Obviously there's a countdown going on in my mind. That countdown was responsible for my becoming a bit insistent to ground personnel shortly before takeoff. I normally don't do that, in fact dislike others doing it, but in this instance I felt it was warranted, and it was not just for my benefit. While we still at the gate, the purser announced that we would have to share blankets, pillows and water. Tower had loaded the airplane as though it were a passenger flight—one blanket and one pillow per person and one bottle of water for each four or so. Crew members, of which we all are as far as I was concerned, normally get a bottle of water each and multiple blankets and pillows with which to make ourselves comfortable. I told the purser to order more. He said he had tried but that the ground service supervisor said they had been ordered to not load extras. I found the supervisor and requested what we needed. He apparently thought I was one of the flight attendants, an understandable conclusion since I was already dressed to sleep, attired in a T-shirt, blue jeans, and barefoot. He refused, whereupon I told him that he had best start rounding up the items as I was reasonably certain the Captain would not move the airplane until they were loaded. The operating captain is a friend and I knew he would agree with me, which he did after I went to the cockpit and alerted him. So, we made the trip with a bottle of water for everybody and adequate bedding, and the ground supervisor now probably thinks I'm a bit of an asshole. So, be it, but I simply refused to have my last Hajj marred by avoidable discomfort when I know there will be plenty of discomfort that won't be avoidable.
It's becoming difficult to type, to hit the right key; we're in turbulence and it's getting worse. Bye for now, and this will be my test message for logging on from Saudi Arabia.
Everybody take care...Terry