August 27th

During this week I achieved what I set out to do in Telefomin, which was to finish the training of Richie Axon, the DHC6 captain based there, as a Supervisory Pilot, or SP for short. A SP is authorised to check other pilots into airstrips they’ve not been to before and over routes they’re not familiar with. They also take on the line training of new First Officers once they’ve been checked to line operations by a training captain.

Richie had done the theory part of instructing in Mareeba, where instructor training is centred. Very deliberately training of trainers is now done at one centralised, specialist location in order to ensure that standards are set, taught and passed on to those going into various MAF programmes. However, there still needs to be in-country contextualisation, and that is what Richie and I were working at.

The weather wasn’t entirely cooperative! I want to let Richie land at a few of our more challenging airstrips from the right-hand seat, the instructor’s seat, but for much of the week these airstrips were closed by cloud and rain. It’s the south-east season still, where south-east trade winds blow across the hot and humid Western Province lowlands until they hit the mountains, and in west Papua New Guinea that is the Hindenberg Wall, in places about 2,000 feet of almost sheer rock cliffs. Pushed suddenly upwards the water vapour condenses rapidly into clouds which envelope the mountains and the airstrips among them.

Tabubil is located in a v-shaped valley that runs from north-west to south-east, so as the major airport in the area it has some of the worst, if not the worst, weather in the country. For two days we weren’t able to land there at all to pick up loads to the destinations I want to go to with Richie, so we’ll have to wait until Nicki and I go to Telefomin again at the end of September.

Further to the south is Kiunga, about 20 minutes flight time from Tabubil, and we heard aircraft from other operators and airlines diverting there when they were unable to land at Tabubil. When you hear that happening over the radio it’s a good indication that you can save time and fuel and money by not even trying to go to Tabubil yourself!

One day we did a flight to Kiunga from Telefomin, descending through a solid layer of cloud but becoming visual a couple of thousand feet above the ground. Flying from there to Tari, 40 minutes flight time, about 100 miles east, we were on top of the clouds at only about 7,000’, but they formed an unbroken, dazzlingly bright layer as far as the eyes could see until the tops of the mountains in the distance to the north, behind and surrounding Telefomin, could just be seen.

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After arriving back in Hagen at about 3 o’clock on Friday, Nicki drove straight home while I tackled some tasks in the office. Intending to finish writing up Richie’s training report a number of other jobs came up demanding attention, so I’ll have to do that on Monday, hoping that the same thing doesn’t happen before I’m due to fly, supervising Brad Venter conduct a flight test with somebody else as part of Brad’s check pilot training. The majority of my flying these days is training or checking others.

From Friday evening, through Saturday and into this morning was very busy as we did shopping and preparing food for while Nicki is away. Nicki did a lot of cooking so I won’t have to do too much over the next couple of weeks, which is very much appreciated.

At exactly the time when nothing extra to do was needed, our sink blocked up yesterday evening. Although the waste trap wasn’t the exactly unhindered, it wasn’t obstructed. After cleaning that out the sink would still only empty slowly, so in the absence of caustic soda or drain cleaner, most of a bottle of bleach went down the plughole, followed this morning by boiling water.

It seems to have done the trick, at least for the moment, but I’ll try to find some caustic soda tomorrow (Monday). The kitchen waste pipe has a very shallow fall once it goes outside and runs just under the joists to the main waste pipe, so I suspect the blockage was along that section.

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Nicki is off on her world circumnavigation. As I write at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday afternoon she is about 30 minutes into her flight between Port Moresby and Sydney. In Sydney she’s staying with friends overnight before the real long haul sector from Sydney to Dallas Fort Worth tomorrow, which at 15 hours non-stop is, I believe, the longest sector by any airline.

Once when we were travelling from the east coast of the USA, probably it was at Raleigh-Durham, I overheard some excited passengers saying how this was their first long haul flight. Raleigh to Heathrow, somewhere between 7 and 8 hours, that doesn’t quite live up to the long-haul flights we are used to! Dallas to Heathrow at 10 hours is getting up there, which Nicki will have when she leaves Andrew and the family on September 6^th.

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I have three check flights to do this week, and also to prepare the crew resource management course I’m running on Monday to Wednesday next week, just before leaving to meet Ithaka Grace myself. I’ve run CRM courses many times before but the material needs updating and upgrading, so every free moment this week will be spent working at that.

I’m expecting that a couple of Nepalese pilots will be joining us for the course. MAF has had a presence in Nepal since the major earthquake a few years ago, not flying, but working primarily with one of the local air operators. We’re hoping that this will be a good opportunity for interaction, and to widen the experience of the two pilots.  

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Thunder is beginning to rattle around, but still at a distance. There’s been a lot of heavy rain recently, especially while we were in Telefomin. Tropical heavy rain is in a different league, except on rare occasions, with what’s called heavy rain in the UK. South Texas at the moment will be in a different league again with Hurricane Harvey bashing his way along the coast.

Nicki and I saw what we both think was the most vivid rainbow we’ve ever seen in Telefomin. The picture, as is so often the case, doesn’t do it full justice.

And to the sound of U2’s Joshua Tree album, I’ll sign off.

August 20th

It’s been a meeting filled week this week as I think I mentioned it would be in last week’s letter.

The Aviation Safety Action Group meets every 2-3 months, the 3 months is a limit within our procedures to ensure that it’s not the sort of meeting that keeps on getting deferred so that it never happens. Not that I’ve noticed too many meetings to which that applies and this particular meeting happened on Tuesday.

It consists of a review of various incidents and reports that have come in since the last meeting, or which are outstanding from the previous one. Sometimes quickly, sometimes more gradually, the items are resolved and hopefully procedures improved and the organisation made safer as a result.

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The Operations Team meeting on Wednesday followed a meeting with some representatives of the Australian High Commission. They were reviewing how their drought relief efforts worked last year, meeting with the different organisations involved and seeing what could be learnt if similar work is needed in the future. I thought that it was a worthwhile visit and it was also good to see a review like that taking place.

The Ops Meeting straight afterwards was a marathon. In fact, it was approximately six hours longer than Mo Farah took to run his first competitive marathon. As a complete aside, I cannot see how anybody can run so fast, so continuously, over 42km, to complete the course in just over two hours. 

Anyway, back to the meeting, we cleared a lot of the business quite quickly, but then had to spend a lot of time and mental effort working out where pilots and aircraft will be based next year, and how to ensure they are all trained. Progress was made and the task of talking with the people who’ll be affected has begun.

Then on Thursday came the full Leadership Team meeting. This meeting was more of a 10,000 metres than a marathon, but Mo would still have run it in a fraction of the time!

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Come Friday I was able to escape the office, but mostly due to an unanticipated reason.

What do you do when somebody at an airstrip isn’t able to get on an aircraft because he hadn’t booked and all the seats are full, but he then completely loses control and chases the pilot with a bush knife? Fortunately, there weren’t any injuries, and also fortunately, this sort of thing is very rare, probably much rarer than road rage, or even air rage, is on western roads and airlines. Nonetheless, it’s very serious, very frightening for the person concerned, and has major implications for everybody involved.

It would be inappropriate to give too much detail in a letter like this, but the immediate actions include providing appropriate support for the pilot and his family, and closing the airstrip to further flights until the issue is resolved. Quite how it will be resolved remains to be seen, but discussions with the communities affected have already begun.

After any incident like this a pilot is taken off flying duties for a while; that makes common sense. However, the short notice withdrawal of a pilot means that there’s nobody else to fly the programme when it’s a single pilot base due to the ‘other’ pilot being on holiday. There was a lot of re-juggling of the flying programme for Thursday and Friday, so I flew one Otter to cover one part of the programme, and our other Otter picked up what was left. In the end it worked out quite well.

I hope that during this week there will be some information back from the communities about how they intend to take responsibility for what happened.

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Tomorrow I head out to Telefomin for the rest of the week in order to do some training with the pilot based there. Nicki will follow out on Tuesday on a separate flight, as my aircraft is completely full with tourists. We’ve done several tourist flights recently as it is the time of year for the cultural shows, with the Hagen Show over this weekend. Neither Nicki nor I felt inclined to go as we’ve been to several at various times. Maybe we ought to go next year if we have the chance as it may well be our last opportunity to take some photos of the various groups in their traditional feathers and finery.

Some of the tourists, I don’t know about the ones we’re flying tomorrow, have arrived by private jet; we’ve had the relatively unusual event of two shiny Gulfstream corporate jets landing at Hagen Airport within a couple of days of each other.

Flying for an hour in one of our Twin Otters will be a somewhat different experience, and a lot noisier one, for them! There are also no loos, no catering and no in-flight entertainment other than looking out of the window.

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Getting ready for Telefomin has taken up a bit of time over this weekend, especially as it’s next weekend that Nicki sets off on her travels to the UK via the USA. We’re trying to get everything organised sufficiently so that there’s not too much to do after we get home again on Friday afternoon and before Nicki leaves on Sunday morning.

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Maybe with all the travelling we’ve done over the last four months I ought to see if MAF will buy us a private jet. I don’t rate my chances of getting a positive answer very highly!

August 13th

Here we are again at the end of our first full week since getting back.

• Jet lag recovery has not been too bad.
• A tremendous welcome to Ithaka Grace. We’re delighted for Richard & Bekah, and thrilled to have another granddaughter.
• I’ve had three periodic flight tests (my own) to do this week, so I’m feeling well checked, but could do with a day or two line flying to feel really proficient again. That will come next week when we go to Telefomin for me to do some training.
• Nicki has caught up with some of her admin tasks at work and is on top of everything at home. In view of the fact that travels start again soon she’s not bothered unpacking everything that was put away before going on holiday at the end of April.
• I’ve had what I presume is a mild viral ‘something-or-other’ for the last few days. Nothing serious, but a large reduction in energy levels. 
• Local society is getting back to normal after the elections. The club up the road has started generating noise once again, fortunately not all night, at least so far.
• During the elections we were told that power had been good, probably because businesses, schools and government departments were all shut. Life is definitely back to normal today because it has been off since mid-morning.
• A meeting filled week lies ahead with some important decisions to be made as we plan for the rest of this year and into next.

So there’s a bullet-point report as this week. Hopefully the next one will be more creative.

Have a good week.