Rain & Winter

I thought I would follow up the last blog with a note on the annual rainfall in the UAE, and Dubai/Sharjah in particular. My first taste of rain was early January when I took a friend, AMM, to the airport. Traffic was just backed up everywhere and I would have only called the rain light.

However, it did rain when President Bush arrived. As I mentioned earlier, all the bridges, overpasses, and tunnels were closed. The night he left, it started pouring and continued for approximately thirty-six hours straight. In an area that only gets about eleven days of rain a year, they received a record rainfall causing flooding everywhere. I’m sure the prevailing thought is “who needs drainage?” What President Bush was not able to close, the rain did. The only way to equate this event would be to compare it to a “snow day” or “hurricane” party day in the States. We ended up with eighteen inches of water just standing in front of our apartment for two to three days. This area came to a stand still. In the states when you mix sand and water you get a beach, here you get a sticky mud!

As the good drivers of the UAE found out, when you hit deep standing water at thirty klicks or better your car doesn’t work anymore. Cars were everywhere. Many cars were covered just where they were parked. It is very difficult for camel drivers to understand mechanics!


During the last four trips to Kabul, the temperature hasn’t gone above 0 degrees Celsius and is usually about -20 at night. Only a light dusting of snow has hit the valley but extremely heavy snow in the mountains. I keep thinking it is only a matter of time till winter hits but I’m beginning to think if we can make it through the first week of February, we may have bypassed winter in the valley.

I have inserted a recently taken picture of the RWY 29 in Kabul take off position.. You will be able to blow it up to see the mountains right off the departure end. The other interesting thing about this picture is when you blow up the L1011 on the upper left part of the picture; it is an old Delta L1011 which I flew years ago. The L1011 stayed on that taxiway for about a week due to a mechanical.

The problem in Kabul, at least at the airport is electricity. When it is -20 at night with no power, the building gets cold soaked and it really can’t warm up during the day. Adding to that is the fact that some of the doors don’t close and the windows leak air it is hard to file a flight plan. ISAF supplies the computer for flight planning so it is always up during the daylight hours. But I can tell you, one computer doesn’t heat a room! Still, the only approach available is the VOR/DME.

Now it is time for another commercial. For those of you that keep asking about the “kids” and what is going on in their lives, there is now a new web site that connects them all. http://www.theturbevilles.com/ should answer all your questions. There are also connections available to their videos made on cruise. The videos show that there is far too much time available on cruise for junior officers.

While you’re there, be sure to vote for Captain Bob as your pilot of choice. You’ll see what I mean when you get to the web site. Actually, just enjoy the great job they have done getting this site put together. I think this is a preamble for the blogs from Tilbisi, Georgia. A definite site for “old woodpeckers, blackhawks, and executioners!”

As A has said before, we joined the Aviation Club in Dubai. It has all the athletic amenities we could wish for plus about eight tennis courts. At the center of all this is the Dubai Tennis Stadium where the Dubai Open takes place later this month. I’m sure you will see some of the results on TV during the two weeks it runs. Additionally, it has about twelve upscale restaurants on the property of which we’ve only hit four so far. The best news of all is the owner…Dubai Duty Free Shops. We can all guess what is sold in Duty Free Shops at the airports and at the club they are sold for the same cost. This is the only place, other than hotels in the UAE, that can sell booze
by the drink. Dubai is looking up!

Bush Visit

I took the flight to Kabul on Saturday December 16, which really is only a Sharjah turnaround. Two hours twenty up and two hours thirty back. It is all daylight VFR so with the mountains now covered with snow, it is very pretty. Although we fly at twenty eight thousand feet, at times we are only ten thousand feet above the ground (mountains). The schedule on Saturday calls for a two and a half hour layover on the ground.

The ramp in Kabul is very congested and won’t expand until the new Japanese Terminal is completed late next year. Being the airline we are, we always have priority ramp space in front of the old terminal. The ramp will only hold three wide body aircraft at one time. Yesterday I was given the number one spot and taxied there with two aircraft to my left.

I realized I couldn’t taxi out in either direction due to closeness of aircraft, terminal, and buses stored on the ramp. So I set up with our tug driver to tow me out when we were ready. Since I’m mentioning it, you must have already guessed, the tug driver took too big a turn and smashed the right white strobe on the terminal wall. Of course there were only a hundred people on the ramp as the Prime Minister of the UAE had just arrived in Kabul for a dedication. Anyway, the wing was not damaged and we could go as the MEL says the other red strobes must also work. All things are possible in Afghanistan, but not everything happens as planned.

A and I have planned a “Progressive Christmas Dinner” with the other pilots in the building, our Flight Attendant Manager, and our mechanics. There will be appetizers in one unit, dinner in ours, and then dessert in the third. As far as the food is concerned, we were able to get a “Butterball” over here --- just not as cheaply as the States. They don’t have stuffing over here, but A brought some with her.

A found a Christian Church in Dubai so we made a test run the other day. Good that we did, as it is very difficult to find as there are no crosses allowed in this land of religious freedom. The church is actually just behind a high school and to get there one must go down a small alley type entrance. We ended up there last night for Christmas carols, and I am using that term loosely. There are approximately twenty seven Christian churches in the UAE all using a different base language. Bottom line is that we heard at least seventeen different languages sing Christmas carols. J&M would have loved it!

I’m continuing this about two and a half weeks after the previous part was written due to numerous personnel, plane, and weather related incidents have taken up so much time. These are only stories for late night or at the lake and certainly cannot be printed here!

It is now the second week in January and winter is starting to affect the flights into Kabul. The mountains around Kabul are at the 16,500 foot range with Kabul being at 5800 feet. It is really quite a sight to see the snow encroaching into the valley as the mountains have been covered with snow for about six weeks. There is very little, both physically and in amount, of deicing available so the weather has to be watched very carefully as to not get stranded up there. We would have to use ISAF facilities for deicing and it is very expensive.

There is a very delicate balance in Afghanistan between the government, ISAF Forces, and the local population. Kabul only has one precision approach which is the ILS RWY 29. I believe it was the US who just donated a new generator to Afghanistan specifically for maintaining the ILS. When the offer also came with installation, the Afghanis balked and said they had their own engineers and they should install it. They completed the installation and only “forgot” one step, calibrating the volts and freqs. So, the bottom line is that Kabul now has a solid metal box at the end of the runway that formally was an ILS. In the middle of winter in the mountains with wind, snow, and ice, we are now limited to a VOR/DME approach for the next two months or more.

Expansion is right around the corner as we have exercised Fifth Right Freedoms in two different countries that will allow us to now go to the sub continent of India (three cities) as well as getting into Europe from Dubai. Of course the hold up is hiring new pilots. It is hard to pin everyone down, but new aircraft (for us) are in the pipeline.

Our kids gave us a dinner for our birthdays at the Burj Al Arab and we decided to exercise it on Monday. It was full for dinner for all of the nights we wanted to go, so we opted for lunch. This restaurant is inside the world’s only seven star hotel. The only way you can see the restaurant is to have a reservation for either a room or one of the restaurants. Our limo driver was very pleased we had our invitation with us, otherwise we would have had to pay 250 DHRs each or $135.00 just to get in the door! Just because we didn’t have to pay it doesn’t mean the hotel get their take it in other ways!

The food and service was just superb! Tuna Carpaccio, fresh salmon, vichyssoise, sea bass; and every serving was better than the prior. I’m not a big seafood connoisseur, but if I could have seafood cooked like that, I would have it all the time. I must tell RD that I had their Crème Brule for dessert and also refused to share. It was as good as Paris.

If you have been watching the news, President Bush was here the day after our trip to the Burj. We kind of guessed where he would be when the night he was here the Burj was “closed for a private party.” I can’t even imagine what it would cost to “close the Burj!” Alice had to have her pocketbook scanned when we arrived at the Burj, but I must say it was extremely discrete. On questioning the security people they would only tell us a VIP was arriving.

The next day upon waking, there was a note under our door that today was “just declared a “national holiday” with all bridges, tunnels, and major roads closed. We actually were able to leave because that was the only way you could drive, away! We made great time back since there was no other traffic.

Christmas-NewYear

Now that the holidays have come to a close, we will try to describe Christmas in Dubai. It was different certainly. One of our first challenges was to find a church, not an easy task in a Muslim country. We did find one in Dubai, a complex which serves almost every Christian denomination except Catholic, tucked back from the street so it couldn’t be seen, I guess. Anyhow, due to Bob’s flying schedule, we decided the best we would be able to do was go to Christmas carols under the stars in the church square on the 23rd. There were choirs from each denomination that functions out of the church, most of them being Indian, Asian, African, or from the Pacific Islands and many being quite evangelical. It was a very interesting and unique evening. I’m glad we went.

Christmas day we had a sit-down dinner for 12 Safi people in our little apartment. It was a bit of a challenge, but everyone seemed to enjoy it. We even found a 24-pound Butterball. We did miss our family, but we tried to make the most of it, and Santa did manage to find us over here. He seems to think we should do some rug shopping, so I’ve been trying to learn about different Oriental carpets online. The Iranian silk carpets are exquisite, far superior to anything else, but the prices are also exquisite.

Unfortunately for Bob, all through the holidays he has had to deal with some personal issues that came up with one of the pilots. It got to be very stressful for everyone here, but at least the issue is resolved now. I don’t think Bob knew he was going to be housemother for this group too.
We actually had a wonderful New Year’s Eve. We’ve found this place called the Irish Village, pictured above, which is part of a complex also containing the Dubai Tennis Center, a variety of other restaurants, and the Aviation Club, which consists of a nice clubhouse, pool, spa, restaurant, and numerous other amenities. It looks like they accept short-term members, so we plan to pursue that this week.

Anyhow, back to New Year’s Eve, the Irish Village had an outdoor party “limited” to about 2,000 people, all outside, as the weather is just fabulous this time of year. They served a wonderful buffet and had about four bands, one of which was a good ABBA- imitation group. We had a great time dancing to all the best of ABBA. Most of the people on the dance floor were younger than our kids, but we had fun. I really think if this Aviation Club works out, Dubai is going to look a whole lot nicer, even from our dumpy apartment.

We are very excited about having a special dinner at the Burj al Arab, the hotel that looks like a sail that’s in all the pictures of Dubai. Our kids have given us a special night out, and all we’re waiting for is Bob to have his schedule set so we can go in the next week or two. This is the restaurant that you get to by “submarine,” and hopefully now the holidays are over, we’ll be able to get a reservation.

As this blog has not gone to final edition yet, we are now new members of the Aviation Club, and hopefully that will give us an avenue to the activities we enjoy and people with the same interests.

This week the Italian VP of maintenance for Safi has had his wife here, so at least I’ve had someone to pal around with. We’ve hit the souks and a couple of the shopping centers looking for good deals, etc. The best buys are in the Sharjah souk, and she’s a great negotiator. I’ll be sorry to see her go. She’s been a lot of fun.

I will have Bob do the next blog to give a little different perspective on life in Dubai. In the meantime, we do hope the new year is starting well for everyone.

ASD