I remained as calm as I could; in that environment I didn’t want to seem like some complaining Western pauper. But the fee was ridiculous. I asked if it wouldn’t be too much trouble to get a breakdown of the charge.
‘Certainly, sir,’ they answered ever so politely.
The crux of the problem was that parking wasn’t $100 per night – even that would have been very expensive by world standards – but $100 per hour. And to think I’d almost decided to stay two nights.
I asked if they could reconsider the parking fees, given the size of my plane. After all, it wasn’t as big as the $30-million Gulfstream jets parked either side of the Sun. It took a few minutes on the phone before the fee was halved – but the good news was presented to me in a way that made it clear I should never think of asking this again. With gritted teeth, but still smiling, I paid the fee and went on my way. There was nothing I could do, but I did decide to warn other pilots away from stopping there. And, all in all, it had been pretty cool to land at that runway and explore Dubai’s docks. In life, some experiences just cost more than others.
I was given permission to taxi towards the runway among several large passenger jets. Just as I reached the final holding point, where I was to wait before taking off, the ground controller told me to switch to the control tower’s radio frequency. After a few minutes I realised that, while I could hear all of the jets around me talking on the radio, I couldn’t hear the tower and it couldn’t hear me. Jets behind me were starting to ask to go around me ‘if he’s not going to respond to the tower’s directions’.
The embarrassment of holding up professional pilots was excruciating. I asked the pilot of the Airbus at the adjacent holding point to explain over the radio that I could hear everyone except the tower. A message was relayed back that I would have to wait for an airport official in a marshal’s car. He arrived quickly and said that I could not operate the Sun at the airport without a working radio. She was being grounded.
The Sun was sitting in a small dip in the ground next to a large radio tower, which I believed was used for navigating instrument landings. Could that be blocking the radio signal? I thought. Or am I just too low to the ground? I asked the marshal to advise that my radio was working fine, and I believed I was just being blocked somehow. Could I try moving to another spot? I pictured the controllers in the tower shaking their heads and wondering why they let these little planes in here.
After forty-five agonising minutes, I was directed to follow the marshal car. It led me towards a second runway. As soon as we’d taxied about fifty metres the tower came back on the radio perfectly.
‘Dubai Tower, Three X-ray Papa reading you, five out of five,’ I said.
‘Three X-ray Papa, also reading you,’ the controller replied. ‘Continue following the marshal car.’
What a relief, I thought.
I taxied for ten minutes and lined up at the second runway. The tower cleared me for take-off and granted permission for a touch-and-go on Dubai Creek, an opportunity I wasn’t going to pass up. An early-evening golden sun painted the river, which was smooth and filled with timber boats plying their trade. It was a fabulous feeling to land on the water seventy-seven years after the first Qantas Imperial Empire flying boats.
An air-traffic controller directed me to ‘follow the coastline not above 1500 feet’. Sweeter words had never been heard by this pilot. With the Dubai city skyline to my left glowing in the setting sun, I flew over The World, a series of artificial islands shaped like a map of the Earth, and The Palm, which deployed the same concept in the shape of a tree. They were incredible sights, although I remember thinking both projects were ridiculous when they were proposed. The Palm had sold out; a second version is now under construction. The World, though, was a disaster. There just weren’t many people prepared to pay millions for a patch of sand in the shape of a country off the coast of Dubai, where it is so hot and salty. The World’s islands were already eroding away, looking more like sandy blobs than discernible countries. Oops, I thought, my mood lifting after the radio embarrassment.
The night landing at Abu Dhabi was glorious. The quiet, private airport had no other planes landing or taking off, which made it stress-free after the busy Dubai International. The majestic Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque glowed a spectacular blue beside the runway.
I had booked a room at the Armed Forces Officers Club Hotel. There were two reasons I wanted to stay there: it was next to the airport, and it was called the Armed Forces Officers Club, surely some throwback to the world of Empire I was seeking. The place proudly advised it had a shooting range; while I didn’t have a go at this extra-curricular activity, I thought it was a bizarre attribute to promote.
If Dubai was like Sydney or Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi was Adelaide or Singapore. The city is pleasant, clean and polite. There are fewer high-rises than in Dubai, and most are elegant. The city’s Al Mariah cinema had three seating prices, the same system I’d seen in India. But in the sexually repressed Middle East, the rear seating was in private booths, every one of which had a box of tissues and a blanket. I bought my fifth and (I hoped) final ticket, over several thousand kilometres and eight time zones, to Furious 7. What better place to finish watching the movie than the city where the grand finale was set and filmed?
For a country that spends US$50 billion a year on defence, it was surprisingly hard to let the Saudi Arabian authorities know that I had crossed their border. No one answered my radio calls until I was about 150 kilometres from Riyadh, the capital.
When we did speak, the Saudi air-traffic controller seemed perplexed. ‘November Four Seven Three X-ray Papa, please confirm you are a helicopter,’ he said.
‘Riyadh Approach, negative – I am a fixed-wing amphibian. November Four Seven Three X-ray Papa.’
Ten minutes later he was back on the radio. ‘November Four Seven Three X-ray Papa, please confirm radial [the heading from the airport] and distance, and that you are a helicopter?’
‘Negative, Riyadh Approach. I am a fixed-wing amphibian. ICAO identifier Sierra Romeo Echo Yankee, on zero seven zero radial at two zero miles.’
Five minutes later he was back again: ‘November Four Seven Three X-ray Papa, you are identified, please confirm helicopter.’
It wasn’t the first time on the trip the Sun had been mistaken for a helicopter; the Saudi controllers had probably never seen a plane flying that slowly before.
As I approached the airport, the air became hotter and more turbulent. It was 53 degrees Celsius inside the cockpit, and I was feeling it.
Riyadh has two parallel runways. The airport had posted a note to pilots, known as a NOTAM, which I’d read that morning before leaving, stating that the left runway was closed. Despite this, the controller directed me to land on the left runway. I wondered if they were instructing me to use it to keep me away from the bigger, faster planes. When I was just 100 feet above the ground, and only seconds before I touched down, a panicked call came from the tower: ‘Three X-ray Papa, you are not a helicopter. The runway is closed. Go around; repeat, go around.’
I applied full power and sent the Sun back into the sky.
Hot air is less dense than cold air. In the extreme heat the Sun struggled to gain altitude. After two minutes the engine began to overheat, even though the fuel levels by now were relatively low, reducing the weight. The tower told me to wait for an Air India Boeing 777 to land, and then the Sun was cleared for the right runway.
On the ground, I was directed to a private jet terminal. I was then told to wait with the engine running, until instructed where to park. The engine’s temperature gauge started climbing towards red again. Eventually, a ground marshal arrived and walked me the last couple of hundred metres. What a day, I thought, the sweat pouring off my body.
Sadly, it wasn’t over. Officially, no avgas was sold at the airfield, but a ground handler I had hired in advance had arranged for a fuel truck to come from another airport. I appreciated the consideration, but had been advised tha
t the avgas in the truck was priced at US$6 a litre. The prospect of paying over a thousand dollars to fill the Sun’s tanks was sickening, but I had no choice.
As the refuelling was finishing, another small plane landed and parked, flown by two Frenchmen on an expedition. Their handler came out to greet them and, to my dismay, handed them plastic jerry cans filled with fuel, which upon enquiry I discovered was car petrol costing only twenty-five US cents a litre. I asked my handler what was going on. He shrugged – he really didn’t care. I asked the other handler how he had arranged the petrol. ‘You have the wrong handler,’ he replied. I wasn’t feeling the generosity I’d experienced in every other city thus far.
Saudi Arabia’s austere form of Islam disapproves of alcohol, although apparently not of the exploitation of foreigners. In response to a question on the customs form for private pilots – ‘Has bar been locked?’ – I wrote: ‘Not applicable.’ The customs agents didn’t believe me and insisted on inspecting the Southern Sun. We all got into a minibus and drove across the tarmac, passing many impressive private jets. As we turned the corner and my plane came into sight, they started muttering to each other. There was much head-shaking and gesticulations, and then the minibus did a U-turn before we even reached the plane. Hah! I thought. Take that, Saudi customs service.
I was looking forward to getting to my hotel and showering. There are no cinemas in Riyadh, party town that it isn’t, and anyway I just wanted to rest, write and get an early night. That might have happened if the taxi driver had known where my hotel was. We drove around for over an hour, passing some landmarks three times. He eventually dropped me at the wrong hotel. I got to the right one in the end.
Despite my exhaustion, I felt excited about the next day’s adventure. I had a day of discovery in Riyadh, before flying out the following day to follow in Lawrence of Arabia’s footsteps, figuratively, by entering Aqaba from Wadi Rum.
T.E. Lawrence didn’t change history sleeping in. My planned Riyadh hotel checkout time was 2 a.m. and I reached the airport at 3 a.m. If I could depart in the relatively cool pre-dawn, the Southern Sun would have a chance of climbing into the sky with full tanks without overheating, and we would get to Aqaba, in southern Jordan, by the early afternoon.
Flying across the desert during the day is hard work. The intense heat creates thermal columns of air, and these buffeted the tiny Sun like a boat on a stormy sea. The near-constant turbulence can cause nausea even in experienced pilots, and makes flying in a straight line at one altitude a physically and mentally draining wrestle with the control stick.
My plan to beat the heat was defeated by the wind. Even if it hadn’t been blowing at 50 knots from the direction I wanted to travel – making the flight impossibly slow – the wind was whipping up a dust storm that closed my options down. It was my first weather delay in the thirty-three days since I had left Melbourne. I had been lucky, and I knew it. But of all the cities to be delayed in . . . Riyadh is a bustling city, but its lack of tourism and activities for Western visitors meant that it didn’t make my list of the top 999 cities to visit before you die. It was only when Anne asked me if the Saudi women seemed repressed that I realised I hadn’t seen any.
I waited at the airport all day for the weather to improve. I got a few hours’ sleep in a crew room on a vinyl recliner seat that looked like my father’s suburban throne back in the 1970s. I was concerned about my onward plans, as while I had permission to land in Jordan, clearance for my next destination had still not come through. I had been working on my Israeli clearance for months, with so many people involved in helping – from a friend, Joel Pearlman, who worked at Village Roadshow in Melbourne, to officials from AOPA, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association in Sydney, to local pilots in Israel keen for me to visit – but still we were waiting. I tried calling Israel to confirm the details of my hoped-for arrival in two days, but each time I dialled, the phone disconnected from the network. When I tried ringing Australia, it connected perfectly; only calls to Israel were blocked. Seriously, I thought. At least talk to each other.
The bad weather would persist for another couple of weeks, according to the air-traffic controllers, but my forecast said the wind would dissipate that night, and the temperature would drop twenty degrees. It seemed my best option was to leave at 10 p.m. and fly ten long hours through the cooler darkness. I was pleased to be a night-rated pilot.
Night flying, clouds and engine failure can be the unfortunate killers of amateur fliers. VFR-rated pilots like me are required to navigate by map and compass. Of course, that’s much harder at night when you can’t see what is on the ground. In these situations, the GPS becomes an invaluable tool, but it’s not infallible. GPS systems can fail, pilots can fall asleep, and it’s much easier to lose the horizon at night and hit the ground or a mountain.
I would have preferred to fly during the day, but my choice was either being stuck in the middle of the desert for a few weeks or flying overnight, so I decided it was time to grunt up and take it on. I had done night training but had flown no longer than an hour at a time, and that had mostly been before sunrise or after sunset, and to a familiar airport. I trusted that the sky would be clear, and that the stars would be bright in the desert.
The first two hours were uncomfortable. There was a lot of turbulence; the wind was so strong at one stage that the Sun was travelling over the ground at just 45 knots, which was about half my actual airspeed. It rained part of the way, which took me by surprise; during the day, a raincloud could easily be seen and avoided. At night the first I knew of the rain was when the drops hit the windscreen. Night flying was indeed much more demanding.
After a few hours, Riyadh air-traffic control passed me off to a new controller in a different sector. That was when things got interesting – or, as I found myself thinking of VFR, very friggin’ real.
‘November X-ray Papa, confirm your altitude?’ the controller requested.
‘Eight thousand, five hundred feet, November X-ray Papa,’ I replied.
‘Why are you at 8500 feet?’
‘Eight thousand, five hundred feet was the altitude filed on my flight plan.’
There was silence, then: ‘November X-ray Papa, are you VFR?’
‘Affirm, VFR.’
‘But VFR is not allowed at night. Did you get permission?’
‘Yes, I lodged my flight plan. It was approved when I was given departure clearance.’
‘But you cannot fly VFR at night.’
‘I have been, for three and a half hours. I am night-rated. My flight plan was approved.’
‘November X-ray Papa, you cannot fly VFR at night.’
What next? Was he going to make me land? There was silence for what seemed like an age, although it was probably only twenty seconds.
‘November X-ray Papa, you must fly IFR. Please climb to 9000 feet.’
‘Affirm, climbing to 9000 feet.’
I pulled the stick back and gained an extra 500 feet. The temperature inside the cabin was already cold, and now dropped to just nine degrees. My fingers and toes weren’t expecting to be so cold in this part of the world.
But there was silence. That’s all? I thought. How bizarre.
I had tried to sound calm and confident during the conversation, but the thoughts running through my mind were depressing. Would he make me turn around and land at the nearest airport – which I had just flown over? That would have left the Southern Sun stuck when the heat and winds returned in the morning, and me potentially stranded in Saudi Arabia for a week or more.
A while later I was delighted to see the sunrise, which revealed a vast array of crop circles in the north-west corner of Saudi Arabia.
What I had imagined was arid desert was in fact a vast food bowl that extended for miles. The landscape changed as I crossed the Jordanian border and the sea came into view, across some brutally harsh vegetation-free mountains that ran right down to the water.
The Sun and I landed safely at Aqaba, Jordan’s only
port. The resort city had no link to the flying boats, but its connection to Lawrence of Arabia was strong. I am a bit of a tragic for seventy-millimetre film, especially David Lean epics and men who dress in uniforms of their own design.
13.
Rock the Casbah
‘All men dream, but not equally.’
T.E. LAWRENCE, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)
A password would get me across one of the most bitterly contested borders on Earth. Finally, my permission to fly to Israel had come through, complete with some very specific procedures. The Jordanian and Israeli aviation authorities first had to approve my flight plan. Then I was to call a phone number for Israeli security and provide them with a secret word I had been given to activate approval for my departure. Once that was done, the Aqaba control tower cleared the Southern Sun to take off.
With a three-hour flight planned I had much less fuel on board than usual. After successfully passing the first test – telling them the secret word – the tower cleared me for take-off; with its light load, the Sun soared into the sky, taking my heart with it. It was amazing to be passing so effortlessly over the desert that took T.E. Lawrence and his Arabian troops two months to cross. I planned to fly north on the Jordanian side of the border to Amman, and from there to the only entry point into Israel by air from the east.
The slightly long way round brought one big advantage: sightseeing. My route was directly over Petra, the famed archaeological site that appeared in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Anne and I, on a holiday years earlier, had been enchanted by the historical ruins of this vast city. The main temple, carved into the pink sandstone cliffs, is impressive and familiar because its image appears so often in popular culture. What was stunning was how such an important ancient site reveals itself when you emerge from a large rock-crevice walkway. Beyond the main building, a whole ancient village remains in remarkably good condition.
So thrilled was I to fly over Petra that I did a few circles to get a really good look and take a few photos. Then a call came from an air-traffic controller: ‘November X-ray Papa, please confirm your heading.’
Voyage of the Southern Sun Page 10
