The cultural shock was too heavy to just fade away!
My very first encounter with Africa took place in 1975 during the Angola civil unrest (1) I can still see myself getting in Abidjan’s airport after a day spent on a UTA DC8 from Paris onward to Ivory Coast with stops in Marseille, Nouadhibou and Konakry. I remember being met by young folks from Air Afrique, the “African flag” carrier, an association of eleven African countries flying a modern fleet under Air France technical collaboration and financial support from the French government.
The same evening, as I was finding my way around Port-Bouet airport, an Air Afrique employee called me with urgency in his voice. “there is a call for you on the company frequency! come over to Ops, quick!”
On the VHF company frequency 131.95, Saturn 955 (2) was calling. I picked up the microphone as the young Seaboard World Airlines co-pilot advised that one of the refugee passengers on its way to Lisbon would need assistance immediately after landing in Abidjan.
(A UTA DC 8 . UTA was later absorbed by Air France . UTA was the result of a former merger between AEROMARITIME and TRANSPORT AERIENS INTERCONTINENTAUX. )
The man, in severe pain, had been diagnosed with kidney stone and would need to be taken to hospital as soon as possible. Picked up by a fire brigade ambulance, I decided to go with him to the hospital as I represented the company and he was after all one of our passengers. It was the middle of the night and I was on my way in a derelict thirty years old fire brigade vehicle, in a country I had never been before, with a man whose language I did not speak, accompanied by a fireman driving the vehicle, on another one trying to fix the siren. In the seventies, the public lighting was scarce along the 10 miles from Porte-Bouet to the city of Abidjan, and obviously, pedestrians walking on the side of the road were difficult to see until it was nearly too late and the drive had to swing the vehicle in an attempt to avoid killing people.
It was my first time in Africa, it was the first of my African days and I simply loved it.
Kano and Lagos were weird places in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, one of these countries which you either love or hate right away.
(A UNICEF mission to Chad carrying relief goods such as the kind of mission I was involved with during the civil war)
We often flew to both destination with all kind of goodies and certainly did not want to know what was their “final” destination! Operating into many African nations, some of them run by corrupt governments, we knew that at one point or the other we would have to “grease some palms” and this was usually done in a discreet but efficient fashion. It could be done in American currency but also in German Marks, French Francs in West Africa, or even better Swiss banknotes. Cigarettes could also help the on load or offload operation to be swiftly conducted for everybody’s benefit. On a given flight from London Stansted airport to Kano, I remember taking a look at the cargo manifest showing the exact quantity of boxes and crates on board our B747-200 and trying to understand why the cargo was described on official documents as “photographic paper” and why would Nigeria suddenly needed 89 tons of it to run the country! Safely tied down in position 1 located in the nose of the airplane was a brand new white colour Mercedes car! Shortly after landing, the airplane was directed to a remote parking place and as the offloading ground service equipment was positioned and the nose door opened, a team of official from the Nigerian “Customs and Excise” came on board.
Presenting the cargo manifest to the most senior officer, I did not add any comments and simply waited for the authorization to start the offload.
( A manual flight plan, just like during the good old days. One had to go physically to ATC and file the damn paper to be allowed to take-off)
“Just wait for a few minutes, young man, we need to check a couple of things”. Two customs officer asked by the take of the cargo net from one of the pallets and once this was done, picked up a crow bar and forced open four of the crates. Inside were thousands of boxes of nail polish, hundreds of women’s stockings, boxes of stainless steel cutlery, scotch whisky, electronic equipment….
The senior officer came back to me and simply said:” It is okay to offload. Just get my car first and wait until it is gone to offload the rest of your airplane” It simply looked like contraband and corruption and I believe I am not the only one having witnessed such an operation. We carried, “they” paid, so what?
Through several trips in Nigeria, landing in Sokoto or Lagos, I grew a liking for JuJu music and later on for other various African musical styles such as “soukouss”, “Congolese rumba” or Cameroon” bikutsi”, as commercial aviation offered many opportunities to increase my knowledge of various cultures through charter trips over the five continents.
In some of the African airports served by the charter group of Flying Tigers, basic facilities were often missing and runway as well as taxiways could become a threat to the operation. Just try to imagine the experience and talent needed to turnaround a DC8 at the end of some African runway as the ground could not be seen by the cockpit crew.
It was not an easy task to bring the airplane in the correct take-off direction! Getting stuck somewhere for lack of re-fuelling capability was also something that could happen.
A wild cat strike by the fuellers, the barge bringing kerosene to the airport being inoperative, the fuel truck pumps not functioning properly, and we were “prisoners” in Freetown, “captives” in Sal Island or “lost to mankind” in Harare until a solution was found and a “plan B” implemented.
Should the situation become hopeless, the first issue was to find a decent hotel accommodation for our crews and west of Rome, south of the North African coast, it could become a tricky operation. If such a situation was just a minor event when in Europe, it would become an adventure in Africa and sometimes, resting in a bed in a bordello or sharing a room for five people in a hotel where cool beer served in 75cl bottles was available became unforgettable events.
(Civil war somewhere in African: carrying a corpse...)
A trip to Kenya to pick up green beans? or a flight to Cairo to drop some mechanical parts, which one would you prefer? I Liked all of them!
As a French speaking charter supervisor for Edwin (Ned) Wallace’s charter group, I was assigned to an African trip in the middle of the 80’s, when Chad was in the middle of a war with Libya as well as its own insurgents.
N’Djamena airport had been bombed but thanks to the French military engineering (4) personnel, the damage left by the East-German pilots flying MiG 25 and MiG 27 in support of Khaddaffi’s regime (5) had been contained and holes in the runway filled to allow landing transport airplanes including our DC8. 18 pallets of tents and first aid equipment were offloaded in the derelict airport. The ATC tower showed the marks of the recent fighting and the runway lighting was totally inoperative, preventing us to conduct a quick turnaround. Crew rest had been a part of the plan and pretty soon after the last position was offloaded and the aircraft cargo pallets recovered and reloaded on the airplane with the help of French soldiers, the airplane was secured and “put to sleep” as the night had fallen.
We were on our way we were, sitting in military jeeps of the Foreign Legion rushing on the road to the hotel closest to the airport which accommodated both military and civilian personnel. Although the hotel had also been damaged during fighting, and from my bed I had a clear view of the sky through a good foot wide hole in the wall, the experience was unreal !
(Escaping violence with a few goods was often the lot of African refugees...)
War raged in Chad affecting civilian population, but in the small bush hotel, the vision was incredible: an outside wooden terrace with tables set for dinner, china on the table clothes, candles, French wine, flowers, and patrons having a leisurely dinner before having a couple of drinks in the hotel night club which had been spared.
I will never forget the evening spent in that night-club listing to the latest “Top 5” musical titles of West Africa…a very unique experience never duplicated.
N’Djamena airport was closed to civilian flights and we had been allowed to land simply due to the humanitarian nature of our cargo. However, there was no kerosene available so the crew had made sure that we would keep enough fuel in the airplane tanks to allow for a quick trip to Maiduguri, in neighbouring Nigeria, the next day .
After a short night and a quick breakfast we were on the way back to the airport under military protection, I filed a flight plan with ATC (6) and once the crew had the airplane all fired up and ready for a quick flight to Nigeria, we departed Chad to pick up the fuel needed to return to the United States with an additional fuel stop in Sal Island.
I guess it was bound to be one of these days to be remembered as right after take-off and a few minutes (was it minutes or rather seconds?) of climb, the crew levelled the airplane out as the needle on the altimeter reached 1000 ft. above airport altitude, then, with a large grin on his face, the captain put the airplane in a gentle left turn. We all looked by the left-hand side cockpit window and could see the trail of sand dust following, on the ground, the same path as our low flying jet. Villagers were rushing out of their huts, raising their arms.
For both the people on the ground and us in the airplane, it was probably an unexpected unique experience!
Overflying the Kalamaloue National Park, in Cameroon and the small towns of Gajibo and Dikwa in Nigeria we were soon close enough to Maiduguri to climb to an acceptable altitude in line with the STAR (7) chart for DNMA (7) and after the required approach, we were cleared to land in the capital of Bomo state (8).
Getting the airplane to its parking position, the crew shut down the engines. A ladder was brought close to the airplane and the access door was opened. A young “ops” representative dressed in a white shirt and dark green pants entered the airplane. “Are you here to pick-up up some cargo ” he asked, a bit surprised to see an American airplane cargo airplane landing in the airport.
“No, no cargo, we are on our way back to the US. We need to refuel, we pay cash” I said.
“You need fuel? I guess you will need to wait for some time. There is no fuel available for anyone as the refinery in Lagos is experiencing technical problems and our airport tanks are empty”
It was going to be an other of these days…
©2017 Sylvain Ubersfeld for Commercial Air Transport
(1) see “On the way to Africa”, Commercial Air Transport, Dec 5th 2015) (2) A Saturn passenger DC 8 Had been leased by Seaboard World Airlines for the occasion. It was operated by SWA cockpit and cabin crew based in Abidjan. The last three digits of the “tail number” were used as flight number (3) (3) The registration of airplanes (known as Tail Number) operating under FAA rules include the letter N, a number, and usually a code designing the company operating the airplane. The DC 8 used in this operation was in fact registered N8955U. It had been transferred from Saturn Airways to Seaboard World Airlines on January 20th 1975 and was still in the Saturn livery if I correctly recall. (4) France maintains troop in Chad, a former colony which became independent on August 11th 1960. There are several West African countries still hosting French military land and air forces (5) Soviet Union provided Khaddaffi’s regime with military support in men and equipment. If it is true that MIG airplanes were supplied to Tripoli in the 80’s, it is less known if these fighters were flown by Libyan pilots or East-Germany crews. (6) In the “old days” there was none of the “repetitive flight plans” and one had to physically go to ATC and file a “paper flight plan” including all the information needed by relevant ATC to allow the plane to proceed. (7) The four-letter ICAO designator for Maiduguri International airport STAR = Standard Terminal Aviation Route (8) Nigeria is a Federal Republic. The Bomo state is located in the North-East of the country. The Federal Republic of Nigeria includes 36 different states and a Federal Capital Territory.