After my two days of flying to both Singapore and Taiwan, I headed out on a four day trip that included stops in Bangkok, Mumbai (Bombay), Dubai, and then back to Mumbai and then finally back to Hong Kong. I flew with a different captain on this trip, Dave Coote. He was really great, knowledgeable, and helpful. We had a good time together, and he was very patient through all my mistakes.
He calls this trip the pit run. Bangkok-Mumbai-Dubai is the pit run because we fly from the cesspit to the fleapit to the sandpit. Funny stuff. More photos from this trip can be seen by clicking on the photo at the top of this blog entry. It’s actually a photo from Dubai and will be the tallest building in the world upon completion.
Day one on this trip was easy because it was just a two hour flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok. I flew this leg and things went well, however, my landing in Bangkok was okay, but not anything to get all excited about. I flew it technically well but I still need work on my finesse. What am I talking about? No one cares about my landings anyway! The hotel was quite nice in BKK and there are two wings to it. The lobby is very nice and the captain stayed in the new wing, while I stayed in the other wing, which hasn’t been remodeled yet. Hmmm. Seniority rules, I just wish we could have both stayed in the nice wing. My sink didn’t drain and the A/C only kept the room around 78, so I tossed and sweated all night long. Bummer.
Dave knew of a great Thai restaurant just a short cab ride from the hotel, so we got some great food for not much money, 540 baht. That was for both of us, with two entrées and he had two beers. 540 baht is 10 dollars and twenty cents! The restaurant was great with live music from a piano and string bass duo. I actually thought it was CD music until I saw them as we left. It was good to eat with Dave because it gave us a chance to get to know each other and he could learn that I’m really a nice guy, and not some jerk.
The next day was going to be a lot longer because we left for Mumbai about 5:30 P.M. which was 6:30 P.M. for us. We got into Mumbai about three hours later. Dave flew that leg because the approach into there can be very difficult, and he hadn’t flown into there for a couple years. Then it was off to Dubai. I flew that leg and I landed (at night) very well. I was so excited about my landing that I started to turn off the runway on the wrong side. The terminal, big as life, is on the right side of the runway, and the old, dark, cargo terminal is on the left, and I start to peel off left. The control tower guy was really nice and as Dave helped me correct back to right side turnoff, said, “Uh, yeah Cathay, that’s a right turn into the terminal. Have a good night.” It’s funny what the brain will do (or not do) when it gets loaded up or overloaded.
This was 10:00 P.M. local time, which was 2:00 A.M. for us. Finally arriving at the Shanghri La hotel at three in the morning for us, it was definitely time for bed. I got to my room as was blown away at how nice it was. This has to be the nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed in. A Hollywood movie even had a scene filmed here, where the main character stayed at this hotel. I awoke about six hours later and headed down for some breakfast. There was a great breakfast buffet, where I tried Hummus, olives in oil, eggs, turkey bacon (no pigs around the Muslim world, remember?) and freshly squeezed OJ. The orange juice came out of a machine that was filled with peeled oranges, and as more OJ was needed, a crank would turn and squeeze it right there, to be seen through the clear plastic machine.
Afterward, I headed out with my trusty D40 and walked about an hour from the hotel, down the main drag in Dubai. Next time I go there (in November) I’ll need to remember to bring sunscreen because I burned my neck under the hot October rays of the desert. There were some Middle Eastern men in suites and others in the full traditional dress. I had never been to any city in the Middle East, or any Arab state before, so it was a little different to see people dressed up in the head scarfs and all in person and not just on T.V.
Dubai was really great. It’s growing so fast that I quit counting all the new building construction sites. Most of my photos of Dubai were taken in the vertical profile to capture all the tall buildings and that really sums up Dubai. Vertical. It’s growing up and up and up out of the desert, and the progress there is amazing. I didn’t get to see the indoor ski slopes, but I want to some day. At least I now know where part of my gas money is going — to build an amazing city in the U.A.E. I’m also really proud of Dubai because they have proven that Arabs can easily and cohesively work with westerners for the enrichment of both societies. We need their oil to fuel our economy and they need our dollars to build their city. They show that it is certainly possible to be peaceful with the west, and in the end, that is more profitable and stable for both sides.
By contrast, just look at the rotting stink-holes of countries that hate America and shun the west in general. In the 50’s through the 70’s, Iran was friendly to the U.S. and was a beautiful city where western tourism flourished. Now look at Iran: It’s a cesspool in the desert with no tourism and a place where a few wealthy and religious zealots keep the people oppressed. But not Dubai! Wisely, they’ve figured out that in the end, we are all just people who want to make a buck and have a secure future for our kids, be they Muslim, Christian, or whatever. For this, I’m proud of Dubai for their pro-western stance. I also felt very safe there and enjoyed my visit. I also saw enough Starbucks to almost walk from one to the next one without ever going outside into the heat.
I wanted to get some sleep that afternoon because we would be flying all night that night, but unfortunately, I couldn’t sleep. It was daytime for me and getting to sleep just wasn’t going to work. We had to leave for the airport at 10:45 P.M. local time (2:45 A.M. body-clock time for us) and that was brutal. With no sleep and looking at an 11 hour duty period ahead of us, I was nervous I wasn’t going to make it and stay sane.
We headed to Mumbai and then back to Hong Kong, where we left Dubai at 3:45 A.M. for us, and would arrive in Hong Kong at three in the afternoon. Fun times! I took the first leg back to Mumbai and it wasn’t too bad. I was tired but it was manageable. I was really proud of how I flew into Mumbai, because we came in on the same approach that Dave had flown into the day before, the one that is somewhat tricky. It’s tricky because the approach slope is steeper than most approaches, the runway is narrow, so it gives the appearance of us being higher than we actually are, we couldn’t roll to the end of the runway because there was no way to exit that end (we would have to make a turn off exit prior to the end). The runway was short, and we had a tailwind on approach, which makes things even harder as it speeds things up quite a bit. Finally, there was high terrain around the approach end of the runway. All this is going through my head as I come in to land. So what’s going to happen?
The truth is, I got lucky. The landing was just about perfect. Right where it should have been and we just rolled onto the runway. I didn’t even know that we had touched down except for the speedbrakes auto deploying when the main wheels touched down, and that makes a noise. Wow! Dave said, “Well done, well done.” Even if luck had a role to play there, it sure made me feel good to get a good one, on an approach where it really counted.
Finally, Dave took us back into Hong Kong, and that leg was the hardest of them all because we were so tired. That sector was five hours long and I had been up for around 30 hours now. We did an autoland back into Hong Kong because it needed to be demonstrated to me for my training, as as tired as we were, it sure made sense. What’s funny about the Boeing 747 autopilot, is that its autoland system will put any pilot to shame — that dude is right on the money and smooth as glass, every time. I guess when the plane costs that much, you expect it to be good. We use autoland when visibilities are too low for us to see for a normal landing. We can actually autoland without ever seeing the runway when things are really foggy. Amazing. It’s good to see an autoland done while the visibility is good so that we can gain confidence in the autopilot system.
Back in Hong Kong, Dave and I debriefed and went our separate ways. He lives in Australia but has a boat he lives on here in Hong Kong while he is in town. For me, being so tired, I was actually excited to get back to the hotel I was familiar with. It was a long trip, but I learned a lot and am looking forward to my next trip. Things will only get tougher from here, as I am off the basic phase of training and am now moving on the advanced phase, but I’ve got to keep moving up the training ladder if I ever want to be finished with all of this. All in all, it was an amazing trip and I will get to do it again twice more in November if my schedule doesn’t change. We’ll see if I can once again get lucky in Mumbai.
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