The Queen
Another Christmas has come around and here I am once more in Medan. Tonight we are off to the JW Marriott Hotel for a Christmas dinner and that should be very good. I am flying on Christmas Day so today went to the shopping mall with some of the others to get Santa hats to wear while we are flying tomorrow. My co-pilot for tomorrow wanted to get some tinsel so we went to the Hardware store and she picked out some odd black tinsel with stars in it. She will be wearing reindeer antlers funnily enough.
I picked up a bottle of Villa Maria Cellar Selection 2008 Chardonnay last week when I was in Singapore so will be taking that along tonight for consumption, it will be good – even if its bad.
So Merry Christmas to all and to all a Merry Christmas.
The Setting Sun to the West of Lake Toba
9th December 2009
As usual the schedule is running late. But today the aircraft is sitting quietly on the ground and already refuelled. Today’s events are out of our hands.
An hour or so earlier a 737 was barrelling down the runway and suffered an engine failure at what must have been close to V1 (go/no-go decision speed). The result of the rejected take-off was some serious popped rubber. The aircraft was therefore staying put about two thirds down the 2900m runway.
737 stuck on the runway after a rejected take-off
The crew from the morning shift had been holding at the taxiway as the event unfolded and had to suffer through the usual air traffic control madness – being told to line-up behind the clearly crippled aircraft. They tried to alert them to the small fire that had started but another flight was instead cleared to line-up. The crew of this A320 tried to get the point across that there was a small fire.
Eventually Rescue Fire responded and headed out to the runway. The overall management of the situation by the various airport services could at best be described as negligent. Engineers needed to go out and change the tyres before the aircraft could be towed clear of the runway. All up clearing the runway from the time of the rejected take-off took over 5 hours. This at the 3rd or 4th busiest airport in Indonesia.
TE901 crash site near Mt Erebus
November 28th was the 30th anniversary of New Zealand’s worst ever aviation disaster – the crash of the Air New Zealand DC-10 on Flight 901 near the slopes of Mt Erebus in Antarctica.
Much has been written ad nauseam in the intervening 30 years. But the fact remains that when it happened it shocked the country to the very core; nearly every family in the country knew of someone directly affected by the loss of the 257 people on what had become a routine sight-seeing flight.
The investigation led by Ron Chippindale (a man who I studied under as part of an Air Safety Investigation course at university) was very controversial. Like any investigation to this day there is always more than one factor ala the ‘Swiss Cheese’ model developed by Professor James Reason.
Ben Sandilands, a journalist (in this case one who actually has knowledge when it comes to aviation matters) posted an interesting blog on Plane Talking today which touches on the controversy between the Chippindale report and the later report from the Royal Commission of Inquiry led by Judge Peter Mahon.
Maybe because I studied under Ron and found him to be an incredibly astute and personable gentleman that I am somewhat biased, although I don’t even think the issue of bias is relevant. The Chippindale report did not speak untruths; that the crash was ultimately the result of a functional crew flying a serviceable aircraft into the ground cannot be disputed. Although this became the eventual focus of the report the numerous other factors were not disregarded and these were developed in great detail by Judge Mahon. All of which served to show that the eventual ‘pilot error’ was indeed not really the fault of the pilots.
At the end of the day 30 years on New Zealand and indeed the world are safer for the efforts of people like Ron Chippindale, Peter Mahon and Gordon Vette (who assisted Mahon in his inquiry).
On the 18th of November a Westwind Jet (VH-NGA) ditched just off Norfolk Island. The aircraft, owned by Australian company Pel-Air was operating a Careflight medical evacuation from Apia to Melbourne.
VH-NGA, now sitting on the ocean floor
There are numerous serious issues surrounding the fate of this flight. All of these issues will hopefully be dealt with by the investigation that will be run by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB). Without commenting on the issues already in the public domain the most hideous aspect of this accident has been the treatment it has received in the media. Essentially the coverage it has garnered proves just how vapid and pathetic the general media have become.
Nokia E71 in Black Steel
Recently my not even 12 month old Nokia 5000 decided that a functional screen was an irrelevance. It’s a great phone, incredibly slim and reasonably cheap but Nokia’s cheaper models in recent times have suffered in terms of quality. Earlier in the year the liquid crystals in the screen died in the lower half forcing me to get a new screen which was nearly half the cost of the phone itself. Having essentially died again I decided it was time to get a new phone.
Seeing as my quarter century milestone was fast approaching I decided to splash out and join the smartphone crowd. I have long since coveted a decent smartphone. The primary reason being the ability to run an excel spreadsheet to determine the weight and balance of aircraft at work.
Last time I posted about getting diagnosed with Dengue Fever. Well the day after I wrote that post I ended up in Hospital. I had been in earlier in the day for another blood test and my platelet level hadn’t quite dropped to 100,000 so I was allowed to go home.
Once I got home I went straight to bed after putting on a hoodie and long pants and sent some mates to get me more water from the shop. A couple of hours later I really wasn’t feeling good at all so I rang the guys downstairs to say I needed to go to the hospital. They came up to help me down with my hospital bag and we waited for a taxi to arrive.
In Indonesia ambulances are not the same as back home, they are generally just a transport vehicle and do not have trained staff or equipment on board. So taxi it was to the A&E at Gleni International Hospital.
Fortunately for the last 16 months I have managed to avoid contracting any nasty tropical disease but unfortunately as of yesterday my number is up.
Yesterday afternoon I went to one of the more reputable hospitals in Medan because I was experiencing fever, muscular and organ pain and a particularly severe headache. The GP did a quick workup and found my temperature to be a whopping 40°C – no wonder my Kidney’s felt like they were roasting!
The GP ordered a blood test which was done reasonably promptly and then it was a reasonably unbearable wait of about 2 hours for the results. After a while the Nurse could see I was in quite some pain still so asked if I wanted to lie down on a Triage bed while I waited. That helped a bit and then after what seemed like quite a while the GP was ready to see me to discuss my results.
My white blood cell count was found to be 0.4 below the lower limit but the platelet count while low was still within the normal range. At the bottom of the results she pointed out that I had tested positive for Dengue Fever. I could go home as long as I kept up water intake and used Panadol to control the fever. However I have to go back today and have another blood test to check the platelet level, if it has fallen below 100,000 then I will need to be admitted and put on an IV.
Oh bother!
Approaching Simuelue
Its been reasonably busy lately, I have been doing a decent amount of flying which is fantastic. Right now I am on a few days off and will be back at work on Sunday. Very little to report really which I guess makes this post rather redundant.
Same as crashed aircraft but not this registration
Horrible to be writing this but another month, another crash. 2009 is turning out to be quite a bad year for Indonesian aviation and Papua in particular.
On the 2nd of August a Merpati Twin Otter PK-NVC on a scheduled flight from Sentani to Oksibil was reported overdue. This morning the Chief Pilot of AMA found the aircraft at 9300 feet in the side of a mountain near Amisibil. It appears that it may well be the usual story of controlled flight into terrain (CFIT). At this stage the fate of the 16 people on board is unknown but in such a harsh environment there is unfortunately little hope.
