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Izmir - Cairo - Dubai (LTBJ
- HECA - OMDB)
The day starts with both of us
waking a little before the alarm goes off. Perhaps the excitement
of what unknowns we may encounter before night falls has us
both a little on edge.
Room service, we were happy to
discover last night, starts serving at 5:00 a.m. here at the
Hilton and we asked for a 5:45 delivery of a continental breakfast.
By the way, we have eaten just about anything we want so far
without worry about any intestinal bugs but are being more
and more cautious the farther east we travel. For example,
although we are still using tap water for teeth brushing,
we are not drinking it but always using bottled water both
in our rooms and in restaurants.
The van from the handling service
at the airport is waiting for us before the scheduled departure
time of 6:30. As the sun comes up, it is obvious that the
weather briefing and flight plan fax we had received was correct;
it's a beautiful day for flying.
Our friend from our arrival,
Oya, meets us at the terminal entrance and we make it through
the departure checks without hitches. Now that we are leaving
the country, not merely flying from Istanbul to Izmir within
the country, our passports get checked again and stamped with
an exit notification. Pam's magnetic personality keeps making
the scanners beep and she gets "wanded" twice, but they can't
find anything bad on her. (I could have told them she was
all Good!)
Out to the lonely ramp, good
ol' 982GA awaits patiently. I can almost hear her saying,
"Come on! Let's get in the air and start running that gauntlet
to India! Am I ready? Hell, I was born ready. Let's get started!"
P & A are a slight bit delayed
and their luggage beats them to the plane. The airport helpers
all refuse to take any tips. We will miss the Turkish people.
We taxi out at 0612Z, 8:12 a.m.
local time, just 12 minutes behind schedule. Turns out that
there was no ATC slot allocation delay, so who has to worry
about a schedule anyway? Pam is flying left seat; I am working
the radios.
As we expect, the departure controller,
once he establishes radar contact with us, gives us a couple
of shortcuts to get us on our way and soon we are leveling
off at FL270. The transition altitude at Izmir is a low 3,500
feet, the point that we set our altimeters to 29.92 inHg or
1013.2 hPa. We are heavy with fuel today, just in case, but
the total climb, with a couple of short level-off delays,
takes a short 25 minutes. The wind at our altitude is out
of the north-northwest, giving us a 19-knot push.
We are asked to provide our estimate
for Tombi intersection, and do so easily thanks to the GPSs,
and notice that this is the point at which we leave Ankara
Control and enter Nicosia Control. Uh, let's see…Ankara is
the capital of Turkey, Nicosia is on Cyprus, the island that
is disputed between Greek and Turkey. But what didn't dawn
on us until later is that Nicosia is in the Greek portion.
Hence, the controllers don't talk to each other! When we realize
that we are not going to receive a handoff to a new frequency
and we find the frequency to call by searching on the chart,
the Nicosian controller - after welcoming us with the Greek
"Kalimera!" for Good Morning - then proceeds to let us know
in no uncertain terms that we should have called him ten minutes
before entering his airspace! I apologize profusely, promise
it won't happen again, and he seems satisfied. After much
additional searching, we do find the little itty-bitty note
on the chart that told us we should have followed this procedure.
I am sure we weren't the first and won't be the last newcomer
who makes that same error.
Our view of southern Turkey is
beautiful, with snow-capped mountains flowing down to the
Mediterranean shore. Our routing takes us southeast out of
Izmir and then just about due south across "the Med," hitting
the African shore near the Nile river delta. Although it is
mostly clear above and below as we fly, the lower clouds and
haze start developing as we approach land and we see the African
shoreline dimly.
Likewise, our descent into Cairo
is through smoke, haze, and smog, but still Pam wisely decides
to descend a bit earlier than normal to provide us all with
whatever views might be seen. Surprisingly, there are no charted
IFR arrival or departure procedures at Cairo. It's all done
by radar vectoring for the appropriate approach. Cool! On
the downwind vector, south of the airport, about when we start
a turn to base for the ILS to Runway 5R (over here, they say
"Zero-Five-Right"), there they are! Looming though the haze,
Pyramids! I get pretty emotional even now, a day later, writing
this. We are in Africa! We are doing it!
The Egyptian controllers are
probably the hardest to understand of all we have encountered
thus far but we make do and ask for repeats, as needed. We
are told to stop and wait for the marshalling truck to guide
us, and we see three derelict Libyan 707s that have been rusting
away since we did the little number on Libya years ago. (Remember
the joke? "How does Ghaddafi view his fleet?" "Through a glass-bottomed
boat!")
We had heard stories about the
sometimes poor level of service in Egypt but we find just
the opposite. Our handlers, "National Aviation," are waiting
and we get topped up with fuel, have the lavatory serviced,
empty the trash and are closing the door to go again, all
in thirty-four minutes! Can you believe it?
Our first leg today took 2.8
hours of block time and we are airborne again on the leg from
Cairo to Dubai at 0953Z or nearly noon local time. Now I am
in the left seat, Pam the right. This very long leg, over
1,300 nm, goes south out of Cairo, turns east and crosses
the Red Sea, goes across all of the Royal Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia and then follows down the middle of the Persian Gulf
to arrive at Dubai in the UAE (United Arab Emirates). There
are twenty-one waypoints in the flight plan we load into the
GPSs. That's a lot! We lose two hours on this leg also, due
to the time change as we keep traveling eastward.
Radar contact is maintained all
of the way, so position reporting is not required, and most
controllers are easily-understood and quite helpful. We even
are given a couple of minor shortcuts by Egypt, Bahrain, and
Dubai controllers, but in Saudi, we strictly follow the charted
airways. Due to conflicting traffic, we are asked to climb
to FL290 about two and one-half hours after takeoff, which
is fine with us. 270 is getting boring! We hear - and have
heard on most all of our flights the past few weeks - a number
of obviously young, obviously American voices using a "Reach"
callsign. We've got to assume it is our military heading to
you-know-where. Anyone out there to confirm this theory?
Saudi Arabia looks just like
Arizona! Well, not exactly maybe, but from 29,000 feet the
view out the window looks a whole lot like the view between,
say, Gila Bend and Yuma. Lots of sand! At first, there were
some interesting gullies, canyons, hills, but then it all
kinda blends into one big sand box. Now why can't Arizona
have oil down below, too?!
Dusk is just ending and night
beginning as we cross the coast and fly over the Persian Gulf.
Are we really here? Are we really doing this? We see the flames
coming from where the oil platforms in the gulf are burning
off their wasted gas. (Too bad they cannot capture all of
the production.)
Remember when we left Scottsdale
on our first leg, that we had a nearly-full moon leading us
toward Tulsa? Well, it's been almost exactly one lunar month
since then because as the sun sets we enjoy the silver glow
of our lovely moon, again, nearly dead ahead. The tailwinds
are great!
Both the controllers in Bahrain
as well as Dubai sound suspiciously like expatriate Englishmen
and Englishwomen, with even one American voice thrown in.
Amazing! Finally, a glow ahead in the darkness is evidence
of the lights of Dubai. You pilots have picked up the Las
Vegas glow from 200+ miles out, right? Same thing. In fact,
as we descend and now follow the arrival procedure that brings
us inland from over the Gulf that is northwest of the city
and extends our downwind leg past the city to the southeast,
before turning around to land on Runway 30R, I cannot help
but think of how much it looks like Miami. Substitute the
Atlantic for the Persian Gulf and the light-less Everglades
for the light-less desert, and it looks nearly identical.
We shut down at 1522Z, 7:22 p.m.
local time, for a block of 5:45. Remaining fuel is 800 pounds,
enough for another 1.7 hours at altitude. Well done, 2GA!
Now take a well-deserved rest before heading for India on
Friday. That's what we're gonna do!
Thank you, God, or Allah, or
whatever we call You based on our limited human perspective.
Thank You for helping us, being with us always, and guiding
us so easily through this time of doubt and worry. "I am with
you always, even to the ends of the earth." Yes, You certainly
are.
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