Has Someone Forgotten their Toothbrush
Our London black cab picked us up from the apartment and took us to the airport on time where we met Mohammad, the SGS manager. Mohammad is a nice fellow who is a computer gamer and up until a few years ago was the no 1 on the leader board in some popular game that I am not familiar with, but is clearly quite an impressive achievement. As is tradition we were offered tea and coffee. This was a good thing since we had to wait for a man to turn up with the card payment machine. Typically he was late and to compound things he turned up without the charger, and so had to find one. Yet more delays. All of this could not be made up. Maybe Basil Fawlty is in the tower.
Anyway we manage to make it to the helicopter after the usual security checks with our passports in hand. As usual the clearance takes it time and we set of to Al Ain via an overflight of Qatar. Well that was our plan. Dharain Military had other ideas. On contact they informed us that there was military activity in the area and that we may need to be re-routed. That should be no problem, then they asked us if we had a permit to overfly Qatar. We gave them our permit number and awaited further clearance. It would seem that the military were not expecting us, firstly asking if we were miltary ourselves, then if we were a medical flight, neither of which we were of course. Not meeting these requirments may have been an issue, but what ever the issue was they would not clear us to into Qatar airspace. By these stage the radios were becoming week but they endeavored to route us to Al Ain via the south and around a military zone. Our initial way-point being LADBO. This new routing was OK but only if we did not incur any more vectors that took us away from Al Ain direct. Of course this was not to be the case and finally Dharain military ordered us back to Al Ahsa.
Both of us a little miffed headed back to Al Ahsa, set the helicopter down, wrapped her up and met with our friendly Mohammed. Mohammed had heard of our return and was expecting us. He was very apologetic and set about turning us around as quickly as possible. First we oedered the fuel, secondly we explained that this was only a technical stop and thus a there was no need to hand in our passports, next we wanted to talk to the tower and find out why we were not cleared into Qatar. We never fully discovered why we were not granted permission into Qatar, but were told that we should fly to the north and head over and through Bahrain, prior to turning south into Qatar and onwards to Al Ain. So this is what we did.
Our second flight turned out to be much better and by this stage we just wanted to get out of Saudi Arabia. Passing into Bahrain airspace was a relief not only as we had now exited Saudi, but also because we were now under far superior air traffic control guidance. Bahrain, Qatar, and UAE control were in a much higher league that our previous controllers in Saudi and Eygpt. There was one thing I missed about the Saudi Contollers and that was there constant use of the "Inshala Alla" phrase "God willing". I had actually grown quite fond of its use.
On the sea crossing down to Al Ain we passed over a number of oil ports, man made oil island ports and plenty of oil rigs and associated platforms. At the ports it occurred to me that they could be busier, but this being my first time over them meant that I may of course be wrong.
In Al Ain we had initially planned to land, clear immigration and then jump the fence into Horizons air school. But since we were now several hours late we decided that we would leave this until the morning. So straight to customs after wrapping up the helicopter. At customs it appears that i made the mistake of telling them that I had previously been to the UAE. However on those previous occasions I had used my Irish passport and on this occasion I was using my English passport. Clearly this was a n issue since they could not find any record of my prevoius visits. Eventually they asked me if I had a certain number and were was it in my passport. I told them I had not a clue as to what this number was and if Ido had such a number it must be in an old passport. I still do not know what this number is that they referred to and stuck on to my English passport. I have scoured my Irish passport to see if it contained it, but alas no.
An hour later we finally met Andy Woolford, my mate from ATPL school. Myself and Peter parted our ways for the night and Andy took me to his mates house, Brian Steele. I was going to be staying at Brian's pad for the night. Having dropped my back off we all set of for dinner at Trader Vics in some nearby hotel.
A new York Steak finished I order breakfast with Brian and headed to bed.
Anyway we manage to make it to the helicopter after the usual security checks with our passports in hand. As usual the clearance takes it time and we set of to Al Ain via an overflight of Qatar. Well that was our plan. Dharain Military had other ideas. On contact they informed us that there was military activity in the area and that we may need to be re-routed. That should be no problem, then they asked us if we had a permit to overfly Qatar. We gave them our permit number and awaited further clearance. It would seem that the military were not expecting us, firstly asking if we were miltary ourselves, then if we were a medical flight, neither of which we were of course. Not meeting these requirments may have been an issue, but what ever the issue was they would not clear us to into Qatar airspace. By these stage the radios were becoming week but they endeavored to route us to Al Ain via the south and around a military zone. Our initial way-point being LADBO. This new routing was OK but only if we did not incur any more vectors that took us away from Al Ain direct. Of course this was not to be the case and finally Dharain military ordered us back to Al Ahsa.
Both of us a little miffed headed back to Al Ahsa, set the helicopter down, wrapped her up and met with our friendly Mohammed. Mohammed had heard of our return and was expecting us. He was very apologetic and set about turning us around as quickly as possible. First we oedered the fuel, secondly we explained that this was only a technical stop and thus a there was no need to hand in our passports, next we wanted to talk to the tower and find out why we were not cleared into Qatar. We never fully discovered why we were not granted permission into Qatar, but were told that we should fly to the north and head over and through Bahrain, prior to turning south into Qatar and onwards to Al Ain. So this is what we did.
Our second flight turned out to be much better and by this stage we just wanted to get out of Saudi Arabia. Passing into Bahrain airspace was a relief not only as we had now exited Saudi, but also because we were now under far superior air traffic control guidance. Bahrain, Qatar, and UAE control were in a much higher league that our previous controllers in Saudi and Eygpt. There was one thing I missed about the Saudi Contollers and that was there constant use of the "Inshala Alla" phrase "God willing". I had actually grown quite fond of its use.
On the sea crossing down to Al Ain we passed over a number of oil ports, man made oil island ports and plenty of oil rigs and associated platforms. At the ports it occurred to me that they could be busier, but this being my first time over them meant that I may of course be wrong.
In Al Ain we had initially planned to land, clear immigration and then jump the fence into Horizons air school. But since we were now several hours late we decided that we would leave this until the morning. So straight to customs after wrapping up the helicopter. At customs it appears that i made the mistake of telling them that I had previously been to the UAE. However on those previous occasions I had used my Irish passport and on this occasion I was using my English passport. Clearly this was a n issue since they could not find any record of my prevoius visits. Eventually they asked me if I had a certain number and were was it in my passport. I told them I had not a clue as to what this number was and if Ido had such a number it must be in an old passport. I still do not know what this number is that they referred to and stuck on to my English passport. I have scoured my Irish passport to see if it contained it, but alas no.
An hour later we finally met Andy Woolford, my mate from ATPL school. Myself and Peter parted our ways for the night and Andy took me to his mates house, Brian Steele. I was going to be staying at Brian's pad for the night. Having dropped my back off we all set of for dinner at Trader Vics in some nearby hotel.
A new York Steak finished I order breakfast with Brian and headed to bed.
Comments
Post a Comment