By now I had been away for just over two months. I calculated that I had been flying for about 150 hours. Only another forty or fifty to go before I was home.
I woke up in Oman early, not only because the day’s leg to Sri Lanka would be strenuous and long but also because the intense security and the inability to get to the aircraft on my day off in Muscat meant refuelling was best left for the morning of my departure.
I packed my bags and made my way to the lobby. Even in the early hours of the morning the humidity hit me like a thick wall of water. My handler picked me up from the motel, we got into a silver Hyundai and set off into the darkness. We chatted as we drove, and I told her I needed to find some form of food to take with me. This turned out to be quite a challenge at such an early hour. In the end we stopped at a service station, I wandered inside and bought a bunch of items that were far from the ‘ideal’ culinary choices as suggested in the food pyramid.
At the airport, security was as tight as I had expected. There was no doubt about that. We manoeuvered through the international terminal, again lugging the bags and equipment. My passport was examined and the paperwork and General Declaration forms signed: the most emotionless people seem to work in airport security, I have found. Then we headed onto the tarmac in the darkness, boarded a little bus and set off towards the Cirrus.
I spoke with the handler about refuelling. I had a long flight over water and through a part of the world where the weather could build significantly as the day wore on, and I really needed to be on time. I would unpack the plane while the handler organised the fuel truck and while the refueller filled the wings I could sort out payment, using the ridiculously large pile of cash I was still lugging around, before hopping up on the wing and filling the ferry tank myself. All I needed then was to strap everything in, pack my bags on and around the tank and set off. It sounded easy.
But no matter how well thought out your plan of action might be, if the fuel truck doesn’t turn up you might as well have stayed in bed. The Cirrus had been emptied, all the equipment was spread across the tarmac and we just stood by waiting. The departure time was nearing and I was frustrated but my handler was so apologetic that I could hardly feel bad, nor look annoyed.
The day’s flight was to take me through India’s airspace, not somewhere listed on the ‘places to fly before you die’ list I had compiled with information from a range of ferry pilots. I had heard many stories about issues transiting through India and descriptions of interesting moments from pilots who had decided to stop over on the mainland. Originally my flight route had included a potential landing at Calcutta and Bangalore. However, discussion among experienced pilots resulted in a plan that was probably more achievable and would – we hoped – produce fewer problems. One of the first steps was to substitute any Indian stopovers with two nights in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
As I sat inside a small office keeping a keen eye on the Cirrus and everything I owned scattered on the ground around it, I was becoming really anxious. A little over an hour later the fuel truck finally arrived. I double-checked it was an avgas truck: discovering that it contained jet fuel would have just topped off my morning.
Finally able to get things going, I looked at my watch and realised I had a little over forty minutes before my planned departure. I had become quite good at this ferry tank business and with the wings completely full I took over and filled the auxiliary tank. I was in a hurry and it was hot, I looked as if I had just ran a marathon but I had the tank full of fuel in record time. I asked for various items like a dentist yelling for a drill, and worked to secure the tank while people handed me bags and equipment. I had the tank covered, the bags on top and tarmac around the Cirrus clear. I was only half an hour late.
I threw copious amounts of cash towards the refuellers. They did not apologise for their delay and were less than grateful for the money, which was in the currency of Oman, not US dollars. Well, you can’t please everybody. I hopped into the plane and said goodbye, started up and pointed the air vents towards me before contacting air traffic control. I heard: ‘Victor Hotel Oscar Lima Sierra, please note the airport is closed from time 00 to time 30. Clearance and your departure will be available after time 30.’ It was two minutes past the hour, meaning the airport had just closed. Two minutes!
After a little more time spent in the picturesque office with an apologetic handler, I finally made it into the air and I couldn’t have been happier to leave. The early morning sun lit up the desert, which very quickly became the coastline and then the endless Arabian Sea.
I climbed through a layer of cloud towards 9000 feet and watched the day unfold as I worked through the first ferry fuel transfer. I had become quite comfortable with flying the Cirrus in the overwater ferry configuration – I had completed a takeoff at maximum weight out of Hawaii, I had successfully completed a number of ferry fuel transfers, and as for the HF radio, well, that could be worked out on the way. I would never completely understand or like using the HF radio but I had little choice. Always looking for a way to do things better, I had time to think as I cruised over the Indian Ocean.
Many months before, as Ken and I sat around the kitchen table planning the flight, we had spoken about this leg from Oman to Sri Lanka. This had been at a time where I was being drowned in new information, trying to find a way to remember it all, to place it in my mind and understand where and how it would apply to my flight. At the time we had discussed the implications of ditching the aircraft into the ocean.
Landing the plane on water was never a desirable situation, of course. However, the method of landing differed, depending on where the emergency took place.
The best ‘worse case’ would be to ditch into a smooth, warm lake in the USA and to be taken in by a loving family for a good feed and a hot shower. After that not so likely option, a ditching near the shore of a well equipped country such as the USA, Australia or anywhere in Europe would be the next best: somewhere allowing a state-of-the-art rescue to take place quickly. From there the options grew worse: a ditching near a less than well equipped country or island, in an area where radio coverage was limited to the HF, in the middle of an ocean where rescue crews would require extensive travel. The unpleasant possibilities were endless. One of the worst, however, was a ditching during the leg from Oman to Sri Lanka, the leg I was currently flying.
The reason for this could be stated in one word. Pirates.
I had watched the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. The pirates had seemed like good bunch of guys with a sense of humour and a drinking problem. However, I was soon told that those who cruised the Indian Ocean were far from being the good guys. They didn’t have impressive beards or hooks instead of hands or large sailing ships or copious amounts of rum. Instead, if you were forced to ditch the aircraft, they could target an activated distress beacon – the kind installed in the Cirrus. They would then carry out their own ‘rescue’. Although we could never know exactly what would happen, the meeting would be anything but hospitable.
As with all the potential issues our risk mitigation plan took into account the threats throughout the Indian Ocean. We worked out an alternative method of alerting emergency services that did not include the use of the emergency locater beacons, a plan that would use the support team back at home to our full advantage. You should have seen Mum’s face when Ken started the pirate conversation.
Meanwhile, here I was at 9000 feet and air traffic control had transferred me from the Middle East-based controllers to those in India. The HF was still a challenge to use; although set up within the Cirrus as well as it could be, the reception was average at best. And on top of that was the Indian accent.
I had one goal, to see the coast of India pass under the nose of the Spirit of the Sapphire Coast. The greater part of the water I had needed to cross would be behind me and Sri Lanka would be not too far away. My casual thoughts of Jack Sparrow and his pirate gang would be replaced by the thought of dry land, a bed and something to eat. After more than eight hours in the air daylight was fading. I should have already been on the ground but thanks to the refuelling operation in Muscat I would now be arriving at night.
There were dozens of boats floating well off the west coast of India and what I had thought were the lights of civilisation on the mainland turned out to be fisherman bobbing up and down in the ocean. However, before long the lights of a city became unmistakable. I was so close.
I was now back using the standard aircraft radios, chatting to a controller I could understand quite well and it was all fairly straightforward. I had arrived over the southern tip of India before turning right and aiming for Sri Lanka. I stared down at the lights, the dimly lit streets and the buildings crammed tightly together. Regardless of what I told myself, there was no way I could really comprehend that what I was looking at, below me, was India. Once over the water again I didn’t look back at the land at all. Instead I focused on the ocean in front of me and hoped to spot the lights of Colombo.
Finally I was told to descend, but into a cloudy, murky mess. The closer I came to land the darker the sky became; however, a few thousand feet above the ocean I broke free of cloud. The sky was pitch-black but I spotted a dark sliver of land littered with lights.
With little time for the relief I felt on seeing that fantastic sight and knowing I was across that patch of ocean, I was given a clearance to land and with an unexpected change of plans I turned over the coast to line up only a few miles from the runway. It was a monstrous piece of bitumen and think I could have taken off and landed the Cirrus several times before running out of the sealed, smooth tarmac. I slowed down, quickly ran through my checks and moments later the tyres screeched onto the runway. To the right of the runway centreline lay the all-too-familiar ocean but to the left was endless tarmac, a car park for aircraft. As the Cirrus slowed down I spotted a large airliner with ‘Sri Lanka’ written up the side. Unless he was also lost, I was fairly certain I had found Sri Lanka.
The control tower gave me taxi directions, a long-winded list of alphanumerical designators relating to different taxiways which I jotted down before looking at the chart for Colombo’s main airport and working out where I had to go. I soon found my handler, a small group of guys waved me in and waited as I shut down. As soon as the propeller stopped moving they began looking all over the aircraft before trying to peer into the cockpit. I hopped out and said hello. They were just as excited to be there as I was.
I was expecting to see a few familiar faces in Colombo. The 60 Minutes crew including Charles Woolley had flown across to film a few segments for the story that would air when I returned home. It turned out that the joys of airport security and obtaining clearances for filming, among a few other challenges, had made it too complicated for them to be on the tarmac when I arrived.
My handler, along with his very excited co-workers, took a few photos before they all grabbed one of my bags and helped me onto a bus. It was not just any bus, but a full-sized one used to shuttle an airliner load of passengers to the terminal. Tonight it held a kid who had hopped out of his toy plane along with his handler and a few bags.
We swished through security, which was a non-event where I just stood by and smiled, except when being compared to my passport photo, and did everything I was asked to by my handler. I could tell he had done this a time or two before and he was a serious kind of guy – finding someone like that was sometimes a good thing. We laid out a plan of action for the next day and decided on a time to refuel.
I said goodbye as I hopped into the car and sped off towards the motel. So far so good. However, I soon learned that I had left something out of our risk mitigation document: travelling by road in Sri Lanka. Road rules were non-existent, each car seemed to have the option of full throttle or full brakes, nothing in between. The first lesson appeared to be ‘how to just miss everything’. Then there was the mystifying use of the horn. At the strangest times the driver would stand on the horn and appear to lose his mind in a fit of road rage, but when a car almost T-boned our taxi he didn’t move an inch, no horn, nothing. I didn’t think you could be approved for a scooter or motorbike licence if you had any reason to want to continue living.
I stepped out of the cab still shaking and paid the driver, giving him a tip for delivering me to the motel in a semi-conscious and relatively sane state. I checked in and dropped my bags inside the door of my room. Despite the near-lethal cab ride I was still hungry. I had called Lincoln Howes, the producer for the 60 Minutes story, just after touching down, and even though he was a fair distance away he had decided to make his way to my motel for a catch-up. I was looking forward to seeing him: I would get to chat with another familiar face and with only one day in Sri Lanka we could organise the filming in between refuelling and the other jobs.
When he arrived I shouted him a beer, which I figured he would need as much as I did. We had a few more before he had to drive back to his motel. We chatted away about the flight so far; even though emails had been exchanged I had not seen the 60 Minutes crew since the AirVenture airshow in Oshkosh, USA, around a month before. It was great.
I said goodbye and organised to meet the following morning at the crew’s motel closer to the city. I made my way to my room, jumped into bed and just lay there thinking.
Being in Colombo felt odd. I had always wanted to travel to the USA and had done so before my trip. Europe was always appealing and countries such as Iceland and the Pacific Islands had been exciting. But I had never wanted to go to Sri Lanka, I had never really thought about it much. We had chosen Colombo because it seemed a logical stopping place, and from then on it had become a name, one of many included destinations. But to actually be in Sri Lanka was strange, to be in a culture that was so different and in an environment far from anything I had experienced before was truly eye-opening, as I was shortly to discover.
As a tourist, you usually hop off the plane with all your belongings in hand. You trek around the sites with a camera and a backpack. The greatest source of stress is watching what you eat and keeping track of your passport, but little else causes too much worry. I had been a tourist many times before and loved that feeling, but travelling in the Cirrus was very, very different.
I felt more directly involved in what I was doing every day. I was constantly thinking and working towards the next goal, challenge or job. I didn’t feel like a tourist, there was more to the situation than just me. I had an aircraft in my possession and I worried about that constantly. Was it where I put it? Was it being watched? What did I need to do to keep on top of anything that could happen at any time? Had I forgotten something? Beyond the day-to-day duties was also the constant worry that something might go wrong, I knew all too well what that would mean in the media and who that would affect. It was my job to prevent that from happening.
All these were feelings and worries that had begun the morning I departed the Australian coastline. Although they dwindled here and there when I was having fun, such as when I was riding that Vespa in France, they were always on my mind. I knew they would stay there until the day the Cirrus was parked back at home. At this point in the trip, I couldn’t wait for that moment. More than anything else I wanted to be home.
Whether I was flying that day or not, the alarm always rang early to remind me of how much I had to do. On this day I was being picked up in a van that the 60 Minutes crew had sent from their motel with the hope it would provide a more sedate ride than a local taxi.
It didn’t. We cheated death time after time, and my tendency to believe in a higher power strengthened a little more for each kilometre we survived. I decided it was best to take my focus away from the road and look at what Sri Lanka had to offer instead, or at least whatever I could see of it through the blur of the windscreen.
Travelling in a car, taxi or a van to and from the motel or airport was one of the rare times I was able to take a look around each destination. During this particular ride into Colombo, which lasted an hour, I could see the Sri Lankan streets lined with shacks and each small business operating out of nothing more than a tin shed. There was traffic everywhere, it was chaotic and nothing defined the moment where the road ended and the sidewalk began. The levels of poverty were shocking, the way of life and standard of living were far from anything I had seen before. Yet little did I know I had not even reached the slums.
I will never forget crossing a little bridge that spanned a murky, thin river filled with opaque brown water. On either side were makeshift shacks that actually touched the stream. People had set up their homes on the riverbanks, homes that could barely be classed as adequate shelter. It was something I had seen only in school geography lessons: my teacher, Mr Daniels was an absolute champion. He had grown up in India and shared so much about his home country and the surrounding areas such as Sri Lanka. I had seen these images on a Friday afternoon documentary in the classroom, but not in real life until now.
The slums disappeared behind the van as we vibrated violently along the road. The shaking could have been caused by the potholes, or most likely the buffeting around the Toyota Hiace as we approached the speed of sound. I just wanted to get out. This driver was nuts.
We finally arrived at a fancy motel and I walked inside to find Charles Woolley and the crew sitting in the lobby. I sat down and began to fill them all in on the happenings of the last few weeks. There were countless stories to be told. We also decided that I would set off to find an ATM and withdraw cash to pay for the fuel before filming a scene at the local markets. We would then take a ride in a tuktuk, a semi-stable three-wheeled form of popular transport consisting of a small motorbike modified with the addition of a ‘cabin’. The rider sat in the front with passengers in the back, and the open sides meant holding on tightly was something of a must. After the tuktuk ride I would make my way to the airport to refuel and would fill the plane on my own before attempting to make it back to the crew for a quick segment at sunset overlooking the ocean. It all sounded simple.
After piling the camera equipment into the back, we all hopped into the van so the same driver who had picked me up earlier in the day could take us to the markets. It was a fifteen-minute drive combining laughter, disbelief and fear, and it all seemed great fun largely because I wasn’t on my own. We were dropped off at what I was told were the true local markets, a place hidden away from tourists in the back lots of Colombo. It didn’t take long to see what they meant. We were the only white people in sight, sandwiched among the locals out shopping for their groceries.
We stood by the van as the locals watched and the sound guy, who had a habit of sticking his hand up everyone’s shirt, fiddled around to secure a small microphone out of sight. We had a quick chat about the plan before setting off for a walk through the markets. I soon noticed every eye was on us. I strolled along casually with Charlie as one of the crew lugged the huge camera and the sound guy held a microphone on a boom over our head. Our goal was to catch a snippet of the culture of Sri Lanka; one experience of many during a journey through fifteen different countries.
We stopped by a Sri Lankan man and a crowd gathered around as we admired his selection of chillies. They were green and towered in cane baskets placed on the ground. He also sat on the ground behind his produce patiently waiting for a customer but I don’t think we were quite what he expected. Charles asked for ‘a chilli’, a single chilli, and handed over a Sri Lankan bill. The man smiled and immediately set to work, he grabbed a plastic bag and began filling it with hundreds of green chillies. Regardless of what we tried to say, he wouldn’t stop, not until his scales had reached one kilogram.
We wanted one chilli, we now had one kilogram of chillies. I was all for value for money, but this was insane. All we could do was laugh. The growing crowd watched as Charles removed a single green chilli from the bag and broke it in half and in unison we took a bite and began to chew. The locals, who spoke very little English, began to laugh hysterically. They could see our faces and knew I thought I was going to die. Again. Not only that, but I was picturing the confined cockpit of the Cirrus and imagining the long flight to Indonesia scheduled for the following morning. I had a feeling this chilli was travelling on a return ticket.
Only moments after handing the full bag of chillies back to the salesman, complete with a ‘no refund required’, another Sri Lankan man popped up in front of me with something that resembled an elderly tomato. He didn’t speak a lot of English but ‘this chilli hottest ever’ wasn’t the best sales pitch he could have gone with. We smiled at the locals and said goodbye to the chilli salesman. I think he stills holds the record for the highest profit earned from a single transaction.
We continued on through aisles of food stalls and the smells, the sights and the atmosphere were amazing. As we chatted away Charles was picking up strange food, including dried fish that lay in the sun, but the locals knew we weren’t there to purchase anything, they just wanted to be involved, jumping in front of the camera at every chance they got.
We waved goodbye and began the logistical nightmare of organising two tuktuks to ride alongside each other and yet somehow end up back where we started. Charlie and I clambered in one whilst the camera and sound guy hopped in another. We scooted in and out of traffic, one hand gripping the handle and the other pointing in awe at the sights of Sri Lanka.
In the rush of trying to capture all the shots they were looking for, along with making it to the airport to refuel, it was easy to overlook what was actually going on at that very moment. I was in a tuktuk with Charles Woolley, being chased by a camera crew through the streets of Sri Lanka, all for a program to be run on national television based around the story of my wildest, most out-there dream. All of this just for an ordinary kid from the Sapphire Coast. A prime example of what can be achieved with courage and commitment.
Our jobs for the morning were complete, we dropped the crew and the camera gear at the motel and the driver and I continued towards the airport. Three of us spoke with the driver, giving him directions and trying to tell him to wait at the airport until I was finished. It was a hopeless effort and although we thought he had the plan correct we would only know when I wandered back from refuelling to find a ride back to the motel or an empty car space.
The day fled by as I met my handler, we worked our way through security and began to empty the Cirrus. Just as in Muscat the fuel truck was delayed, but this time when it arrived it had three forty-four-gallon drums of avgas sitting on a trailer. Fortunately the fuel had been organised well before my arrival; the three drums put aside for the Cirrus was all the avgas available in Sri Lanka. Without that fuel I would be stuck in Colombo.
A couple of hours passed as we carefully filled the tank. I was constantly thinking of the next leg, eleven hours to Padang in Indonesia the following morning, and therefore added each and every drop from the three drums. We refuelled, strapped and secured the tank and repacked. The Cirrus was good to go.
I walked outside the terminal and began to look for my driver. It had been three hours since he had dropped me off but he suddenly popped up in front of me, enthusiastic as ever, and asked whether I was ready to leave. I had no idea whether he understood anything I had said that day, but he sure had been patient.
We missed the sunset after the delayed refuelling process but managed to find a restaurant and have dinner before bed. It was strange to be sitting around a table discussing the next major event: the moment I would land back in Wollongong.
I said goodbye to the 60 Minutes crew who were due to catch an early flight out of Colombo the next morning and beat me home by a couple of weeks. I survived the final commute from the centre of Colombo to my motel and sifted through the flight plan and paperwork before bed. I had sent an email earlier that day to confirm one final time, after several emails over several months, that avgas was still available in Padang. This was the last time I would need to do this, as after Padang I would be ‘direct to’ Broome on the west coast of Australia. Then I got an email in reply:
‘Mr Campbell, No, sorry, no avgas in Padang. Thank you.’
Oh. Great. As I had done so often before, I called Mike Gray from White Rose Aviation in the UK. Mike had organised every overflight and landing clearance and their limited validity meant that any changes in plan would require a little teamwork and understanding of when we could legally fly. Besides this, it was part of Mike’s everyday job to safely navigate a range of pilots and aircraft across the globe, so he had a phenomenal understanding about where avgas was available around the world.
It was now late as Mike and I ran through the options. I kept telling myself that when stressed it is really easy to make a simple situation more complicated than it needs to be, so I had to step back and look at the big picture. This was simple: There was no fuel in Padang in Indonesia and if I flew to Padang I would be stuck. The only avgas in Indonesia was in Jakarta and a quick flight plan showed that if the aircraft was full of fuel it had the range to make it there. The problem was that Sri Lanka’s complete supply of avgas was already in the Cirrus, and that wasn’t enough to make it to Jakarta. Clearly I was not going to be departing for Indonesia the following morning.
Mike suggested adding a stopover in Malaysia but at this hour we both agreed any decision to re-plan to a new destination and still depart the following morning would have been ridiculous and dangerous. I called the lobby to cancel my taxi, emailed home to update them on the changes and turned off my alarm. I would go to bed and work towards a solution with Mike the following day. It meant another full day in Sri Lanka and would put us a day behind, but the options were few and far between.