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.