Rusty Red Roads

Flight Journal, Feb 2004 by Grant, Robert S

BEES, BLOOD AND BANDITS IN CHAD

Seven miles from touchdown, the Chadian controller's heavily accented English penetrates our headsets. Behind us, in the de Havilland Twin Otter passenger compartment, patients sway in the turbulence, while the doctor gazes outside into the haze. At the rear, a baseball-capped male nurse grips his seat in terror, his eyes transfixed on the gray aluminum floor as an empty water bottle bounces off his feet.

"Circle, do not land; big airplane coming," the controller mumbles again.

As copilot on this trip, I press the microphone button to advise N'Djamena tower that we carry two critical stretcher patients and request a straight-in landing approach. To our surprise, the air traffic controller orders us to continue circling so a French Air Force Boeing 707 can land. I address the huge jet directly, stating that we have two badly injured men on board, but receive no reply. We know that they hear us and clearly don't give a damn that everywhere else in the world medevac aircraft are given priority over all other forms of traffic.

In land-locked Chad, a country of 495,755 square miles of dusty desert and steaming savanna bordered by Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Libya, Niger, Nigeria and Sudan, my employer, Schreiner Airways, operates two de Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otters on exclusive contract to ExxonMobil. Schreiner is headquartered in Hoofddorp, Netherlands, and it provides transport and aircrew for a 663-mile pipeline construction project from southern Chad through Cameroon to a marine terminal on the Atlantic coast.

ExxonMobil and its partners acquired numerous oil leases in 1983, and after consulting local governments on cultural and monetary questions, began heavy construction in 2000. When operational, the producers expect 225,000 barrels of crude per day to flow through the pipes. This means that I, a Canadian and one of a group of "ex-pats" or expatriate pilots, work in two French-speaking countries where people still use bows and arrows and wear snake charms on their ankles. Soldiers and police carry rusty Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles and Browning 9mm pistols wherever they go, and I soon learned that few of them understand the proper handling of firearms. Whenever gun barrels are pointed at my belly, I hope that the safeties are on.

This day started like many others at Rome base, 240 nautical miles south of N'Djamena, Chad's capital city. Fellow captain Francois Laugel, a French citizen who spent much of his youth in New York, hopes to switch assignments with another pilot for two weeks in Douala, Cameroon. As he loads his bags, Schreiner Airways dispatcher Scott Woodward (a Brit living in Holland) informs us that an emergency medevac flight has been requested.

Two soldiers badly injured in a vehicle accident along the pipeline need ransport to N'Djamena. A truck is to bring them along [he rust-red laterite roads to Gadjiban, an airstrip 15 minutes from Kome, where we will pick them up. Company procedure dictates full fuel, and while waiting and despite the fact that meteorological reports in this part of Africa are rarely available, we are able to confirm that the weather to the north is holding above limits. Laugel leaves his bags in the airplane because we expect to "overnight" in N'Djamena.

Our Twin Otter carries Cameroon registration TJ-CQE and suits the African climate perfectly. In the midst of dry season, air temperatures often reach 112 degrees Fahrenheit and rarely drop below 95 R Regardless, the aircraft's short takeotf and landing (STOL) performance remains spectacular. AIr conditioners rarely exist on African airplanes for reasons of weight and maintenance, and as much as we enjoy flying Twin Otters, their interiors become incredibly hot as heat intensifies through windshields. Occasionally, a pilot will leave his sunglasses on the instrument panel and scorch his fingers when he picks them up again.

Airborne in TJ-CQE, I note the aircraft's basic 8,254-pound operating weight, which includes crew and survival gear in the rear, and two cases of Tanqui drinking water, or "sweet water," as the locals call it. Instead of heading toward Oadjiban first, in the strange African way, we must proceed to Baibokoum, 77 miles west of Kome, to drop off an American photographer. Groundspeed en route shows 172 knots and indicated airspeed is steady at 132 knots. We also carry Schreiner helper Toumaro Ndoloun and an unarmed air transport security officer (ATSO) with us.

Besides the photographer, a Filipino worker sits directly behind the cockpit bulkhead. His compatriots constitute a large part of the pipeline workforce. They are mostly short and shy people who are considered to be good workers who rarely complain. This one may have come to the end of his career, however, for he wears a tremendous bloody bandage over his right eye. Injured a half hour before our departure, medics rushed him to the aircraft. As I glance back around the bulkhead, his smile is wide and white.

In the reddisd of low visibility caused by sand seeping south from the Sahara-we know that it won't be easy to locate Baibokoum. I briefed for a GPS-assisted approach to the laterite-surface runway, and prior to our descent, Laugel broadcasts ous intentions on several radio frequencies. Although no other Twin Otters except Schreiner Airways' fly in Chad, occasional military an keeps us alert.