Flying Paradise

(Note: Click the photos for a larger view of the scenery)

For a guy who pretty much spends his life in airport transit halls, I’ve never been fond of flying. As a kid I was a nervous flier. As an adult I’ve learned to relax on flights where I know the chance of pieces dropping off the plane are relatively slim (ergo Qantas gives me the heebies), although on some of the world’s more dubious airlines (Air Ivoire, Air Burkina, United Airlines) I’ll still crack a sweat. Planes which rock up without even a tail ensigna (thank you Air Mauritania), I’m pretty much up to giving myself the last rites.

So the thought of flying Air Niugini, PNG’s national carrier, as my only way around that particular little slab of paradise, didn’t fill me with glee. In fact, I didn’t have a lot of options. I was stationed in Madang, on the North Coast. It is connected by road to Lae and to Goroka, but not to Port Moresby, where the country’s international airport is situated. In principle you can travel to Moresby by boat. But it’d take you days and days. Most people opt for the one-hour flight.

Air Niugini has, against all the odds, an impeccable safety record. Impeccable in that PNG has some of the most aircraft-unfriendly terrain on the planet. It is effectively a massive range of spiny mountain peaks wrapped in dense jungle, ringed by a thin strip of flattish ground near the coast. During World War II, when aircraft were unpressurized, limiting flying at altitude, PNG was known for its “rock-studded clouds” as huge spires three and four thousand metres high cloaked in tropical mists jutted into aircraft flight-paths. Dozens of airmen and women lost their lives to the unmerciful terrain.

A couple of factors contribute to Air Niugini’s safety record. The first is the terrain itself. It’s so dangerous that to fly it, you really have to know your stuff. Weather can be violently unpredictable, landing strips short. Because everything away from the coast is jagged and steep, there’s no place to put an aircraft down in an emergency- unless you fancy pancaking a struggling jetliner on a 45-degree forested mountainside. If something goes wrong, you’re up the proverbial creek, with neither a paddle nor a parachute.

Air Niugini, while state-owned and run by a Papua New Guinean, also employs the habit of partnering a white Australian in the cockpit alongside every national pilot or copilot flying, the theory being that the Australians know how to fly better. I won’t comment on either the policy or the theory underlying it. However a late friend of mine intimate with PNG flew on an Air Niugini flight some years back where this policy was not observed. Upon landing, the pilots, presumably forgetting protocol, did not use the reverse-thrusters to decellerate the aircraft, but used the hydraulic brakes on the wheels. The hydraulics, unable to cope with the speeding aircraft, promptly burst with a loud bang, and the plane ended up careening down the landing strip and barely avoiding a serious accident. As the aircraft sat ticking over once the crisis was managed, disgruntled Papua New Guineans could be heard muttering to one another in Tok Pisin, “If a white man had been in the cockpit this would never have happened”.*

 

Stories about Air Niugini’s minor mishaps are rife. Friends of mine were on a flight travelling into Madang that, through pilot error, experienced a sudden violent depressurization at 4,000m, and the plane touched down with blood pouring from everybody’s ears. A few years back, a Fokker F100 ran off the end of the runway in Madang and plopped into the sea. Nobody was hurt, and crew and passengers walked off the plane along the wing back onto dry land. It turns out that the pilot had had to land without any ground support because the staff in the control tower had simply gone out and left it.

Worse perhaps than the safety risks were the delays. Air Niugini’s flights were so notoriously unreliable that if any of us were flying to leave the country on a connecting flight, we would generally book two or three flights earlier out of Madang than necessary (there were generally two flights per day out of Madang), just to ensure that we wouldn’t miss our onward leg. Such events were referred to as “TANG-FU”s- Typical Air Niugini Stuff-Ups. It was an acronym we used frequently, and with heavy bitterness.

Over the twelve months I was stationed in Madang, I spent days and days worth of my time in the tiny airport building- a single room with a grubby lino floor and a few rows of plastic bucket seats. Air Niugini operated two types of aircraft- Fokker F50s and Fokker F100s- the number designating roughly the number of seats on the aircraft. Louver windows opened onto the apron, so that when the planes taxied up to the building, a blast of ear-shredding noise would pound the waiting passengers. On more than one occasion I have spent hours and hours trying to get either myself, or colleagues for whom I was responsible onto one of their aircraft.

The story that in my mind typifies the mind-blowing simplicity of Air Niugini’s mismanagement occurred around July 2008. Several colleagues were due to fly to Port Moresby following a disaster simulation. The flight they were booked on was listed up on the whiteboard (no, of course there was no automated screen) as being an F100, coming in from Wewak and continuing to POM. A total of 100 passengers were booked on the leg to the capital. Only when the plane landed, despite having accepted 100 bookings to Port Moresby, Air Niugini had scheduled an F50 with exactly half the number of necessary seats on it.

In my mind this is a pretty simple set of mathematics, wouldn’t you say? But somehow it outfoxed (routinely) the cerebral giants who managed Air Niugini’s flight schedules.

However the one thing that Air Niugini delivered (for which it really couldn’t take much credit) was the scenery. I’ve noted elsewhere that for all its foibles, PNG is a jawdroppingly, brain-explodingly beautiful country. The jagged mountains that scream “you really shouldn’t be flying over me” are dramatic and awe-inspiring, real heart-of-darkness sort of stuff. Views of the coastline landing in Madang are simply tremendous. Coming in from POM over the Rai Coast, the plane plummets thousands of feet down the face of the Finisterre Mountains, straight out of the pages of Jurassic Park with verdant cliffs dripping with thick foliage.

Even the touchdown (or take-off) in Madang is magnificent. The runway is on the mainland, about four feet above sea-level, jutting out into a pocket of Madang Harbour. Madang itself sits on a series of small inlets and peninsulas, and even spreads out onto the dozen or so little islands plopped in the sea nearby. Outrigger canoes and banana-boats (fibreglass hull outboard motorboats) ply the channels like taxis. The water is azure and palm-trees lean out over the raised reef shoreline. And the aircraft cruises straight down the harbour, views on both sides of the charming waterways and seafronts, until as a passenger you’re sure that the wheels must be churning up a creamy wake in the glass sea.

It’s really quite splendid.

If I never have to fly Air Niugini again as long as I live, I will probably cope with this fact. I do genuinely admire the skill of pilots in PNG- not just those of the small jets and turboprops who do navigate some of the most challenging commercial airspace in the world, but those like the small missionary air companies like MAF whose little single-engined planes are the lifeblood of many remote villages in the hinterlands, and who place their aircraft sans assistance into clearings in jungles or onto steeply-angled landing strips on yawning mountainsides.

And much as I hated it all at the time, flying paradise sure did leave me with some memories.  Maybe someday I’ll tell you about the time flying Solomon Airlines that I spent 8 hours in Honiara because somebody put toilet-paper down the toilet, and a passenger disappeared…

*(It’s worth noting briefly that their colonial history has sadly left much of PNG with something of an inferiority complex, whereby many Papua New Guineans will express feeling less adequate than whites. Colleagues would periodically apologize to me for the state of their country with genuine shame, and the impact on the national psyche was quite plain to see. While some whites do still behave as though PNG is still an Australian colony, it’s saddest of all to see nationals upholding this mindset while they struggle to establish a stable national identity and find pride in their country).

 

All photos except 1 taken on Air Niugini flights between Port Moresby and Madang.

 

Note: For those readers among you who have your own experiences of Air Niugini and the various TANG-FUs you’ve enjoyed, please feel free to share them below- I’d love to hear about them!

Nigerien Nostalgia- Leaving Abidjan

Part three in a series of posts I wrote while living and working in Niger, in West Africa.

Leaving Abidjan

Until we tried to take off, I was feeling okay about Air Ivoire. I’m not a big fan of the little Fokker F-28s that seem to ply every route in West Africa, but this one had a proper first-class section at the front, people sat where their tickets told them to, and they even had an in-flight magazine. We were an hour late taking off, so there was the usual tension among the passengers and flight crew. The safety briefing was a little rushed, and the engines started up half-way through, after which only occasional snippets of sentences could be heard over the speakers while the flight attendant played charades with a demonstration life-vest: “…under your seat… …outside the aircraft… …towards your face and breath…”

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Travelogue- How Not to Get to Nouakchott

I have been revisiting some of my old travel writing, from long before these pages were a twinkle in my eye. These were pieces I wrote for friends which I emailed around- and got promptly told off for being far too wordy. Nothing changes. I thought I’d add some of them to this site and let you wander through some of my journeys past.

This first account is from a trip I did while working in Niger, in West Africa, in December 2005. I had to visit a program in Mauritania for a few days, and had arranged a flight from Niamey to Nouakchott. Needless to say, being West Africa, all did not go according to plan…

How Not to get to Nouakchott

Last night I dreamt I went to Nouakchott again.

Actually, it was last week. And it was more of a waking nightmare really.

It was with a certain amount of trepidation that I headed off to the airport. I haven’t heard many wonderful things about airlines in West Africa, and this time I was flying with some of the old favourites- Air Burkina, Air Senegal, Air Mauritanie- and with a corker of an itinerary that saw me going from Niamey to Ouaggadougou, Ouagga to Bamako, Bamako to Dakar, then an overnight in Dakar before flying on to Mauritania the next morning. (West African airlines operate a lot like bus companies- they just swing past and stop at as many different places along the way in the hope of attracting passengers). It sounded like such fun I just couldn’t wait.

But I got to the airport at two o’clock on a stifling sun-seared Saturday afternoon, and the Air Burkina Fokker Fellowship managed to make it into the air without too much complaining. There is always a sense of incredible faith in the laws of physics when strapped into some of these aircraft, an acute awareness that what you are doing is ever so slightly at the edge of what ought to be possible, that you are effectively in a controlled hurtle skywards and hanging from a very fine thread while flaps and ailerons and elevators try and keep you from settling into an easy tumble. The safety briefing before take-off consisted of pointing out the exits and directing people to the emergency card in the seat-pockets; one is not filled with a sense that people would know what to do if anything serious happened. But despite all, we touched down safely in Ouggadougou, and it was hot and dry, and trouble kicked in.

Click here to keep reading…

Caribbean Aerial

On a monitoring trip to Haiti in 2007, we visited the idyllic island of Gonave.  Haiti, it should be pointed out, is anything but idyllic.  Port-au+Prince, the capital, is one of the world’s most dangerous cities, with a violent gang culture, routine political and criminal violence, and a propensity to mob.  UN Peacekeepers patrol the streets in white open-backed trucks, and foreign visitors are advised not to walk the streets alone.  The risk of kidnapping and hostage-taking is high.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with standards of living similar to those in much of sub-Saharan Africa.  It is vulnerable to hurricanes each year, and the combination of steep hills and widespread deforestation makes the rural population extremely vulnerable to landslides, and lowland areas to mudflows and flashfloods.  Thousands have died in the past decade.  The economy is fragile and food production systems are shaky.  One of the hardest-hit by the Global Food Crisis, 2008 saw widespread food rioting in many parts of the country.

Ile de la Gonave is a few miles off the Haitian mainland, a small dot of  an island accessible by ferry or by small plane.  Home to some fifty thousand people, it has a steep spine built on a foundation of bleached coral edging that slips into a shallow aquamarine sea.  Open ground burns white beneath a tropical sun.  Palm trees and red-flowered Flamboyants grow from the shallow soil.  In the interior, tree cover is broken by steep terraced fields between small Latin American style villages and homesteads.  The pace of life is simple and quiet.  There are few vehicles, far more donkeys.  The roads- rocky coral paths rutted by tropical rains and unforgivingly hard against shot spring-leaf suspension- are the worst I’ve driven on, anywhere- and I’ve driven on some corkers.  But the place is safe, and the people smile, and Gonave couldn’t be further from the frenetic anger that simmers on the streets of Port-au-Prince.

The views flying in and out of the island were magnificent.  Tropical afternoon sunlight made the sea shine beneath us, while we could see the island, its small towns, and the reef surrounding it, like we were looking down from space.  The little Cessna we flew in touched down on a strip of crushed coral a few yards off the beach, one of the more memorable flights I’ve taken- but then, flying in small aircraft is always fun because the views are so much clearer, the sense of being airborne so much more tangible.

From the ground, the views were no less picturesque, and on our last afternoon on the island before flying back to Port-au-Prince (and a memorable tropical downpour that night), I took these pictures from the coral beaches, looking out over the sea I would shortly be cruising several thousand feet over.

This Wreck is the Bomb-er

I won’t say that it’s one of my favourite dive sites, because I pretty much love them all. It is however a fascinating blend of history and nature that teases the imagination, above and below the water.

The American B-25 sits in shallow waters just off Wongat Island. She was shot down during the Second World War by the Japanese, when they held northern Papua New Guinea and had one of their major bases just a few miles down the road. The story of her six crew is not a happy one. Although just one crewman died in the crash itself, the other five were captured and, in retaliation for recent bombing raids carried out by the Americans, executed. The aircraft sits in almost perfect condition as a lasting, living memorial beneath the waters.

It’s only even been murky when I’ve dived the B-25, so I have yet to get a good shot of the wreck as it lies. It’s at a considerable angle, with one wingtip at about twelve metres’ depth, the other down around twenty-eight. The wings and tail-plane are still intact, and even remnants of the undercarriage can be spotted. The deeper right wing has the propellor fixed to the engine, bent back by the crash-landing but still recognizable where it sticks vertically out of the sand.

One of the favourite features of the aircraft are undoubtedly its machine-guns, still mounted in the wreck. There are four guns protruding from the nose housing, two inset in each wing, a tail gun, and the B-25’s distinctive gun-turret mounted atop the fuselage towards the rear of the aircraft.

Divers can drop into the roofless cockpit and sit in the pilot’s seat, the steering-wheel still mounted in the control board. This is my boss. I’m pretty sure he’s supposed to have that second stage between his teeth…

Over time, as with everything discarded in the sea, nature has claimed the craft, which has now become a naturalised reef. A giant barrel-sponge sits on the up-slope wingtip, a distinctive marker during the descent and now growing so big that there are concerns it could snap the wing off altogether. Coral and sponges and algaes and all sorts of other undersea flora have colonized the surfaces. Fish spawn in the hundreds inside the relative safety provided by the abandoned fuselage. Others graze the vegetation under the wings and around the tail mount.

There are regulars here. A White Leaf Scorpionfish lives among thorny corals at the back of the left-hand wing, elusive and hard to spot even on a clear day. The bottom shot shows him in natural light rather than flash-lit, and you can see why he’s not that easy to find. He’s about four inches long. Check out that beautiful eye.

I’ve seen these guys a couple of times when I’ve been down there. I can never tell whether they’re False Moorish Idols, Three-Stripe Angelfish, or some other form of Bannerfish, all of which look pretty similar. They are beautiful- though a tad skittish and hard to get close to, hence the murky shot.

Ribbon eels live in the sand beneath the downslope wing and are predictably easy to find, worming their way half out of their holes like Cobras swaying to a snake-charmer’s pipe.

Yesterday, there was some giant lobster living under the wing. I haven’t seen him before, I just noticed his antennae and the front knuckles of his long spindly legs dancing out from underneath the wing. I didn’t get too close. He must have been nearly a metre in size, when all the protrusions and probiscuses were taken into account. He was a little shy and slipped back into the silt before I could get a photo.

The other resident we came across yesterday was the polar opposite, both in terms of size and body complexity. This little nudibranch was spotted by Bec, who managed to prove to me (as has been proved to me time and again) that I suck at finding nudibranchs. I do, however, love a bit of nudi action when I can get it.

My favourite family of Anemonefish lives on the right wing of the bomber. They’re just back a little ways from the cockpit in a big writhing blob of anemone, predictable and easy to find. Unlike Lionfish or Sweetlips, the Anemonefish tend to be a little camera-shy, and as soon as you point the thing at them, they’re dancing like they’ve got ants in their pectorals. In fact they’re some of the most highly territorial little fish in the sea, and even though relative to them I am the size of an Enterprise-class aircraft carrier, they still try and see me off from their patch. As a result, getting an in-focus photo of one is no mean feat. I resort to the age-old practice of firing off as many pictures as I can take and hoping that by sheer dumb luck, at least one will turn out right.

It works occasionally.

The shot below shows the difference between shooting flash and shooting natural light (this one using natural light).

After spending half an hour on the wreck, we come back up for a safety-stop on the chain holding the marker bouy.

It’s hard to avoid celebrating the diversity of life, even on something as incongruous as a war wreck. I find the triumph of creation as one of the great beautiful mysteries of this world. Left to itself, we find the force of life manifesting in almost every circumstance, even one where death previously triumphed. As if the natural world is telling us with one loud voice, everything can be redeemed.