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We had managed to download terminal
forecasts, winds aloft and significant weather maps at the hotel the
evening before. As expected, we were in IMC with occasional rain for the
first hour or so, and had the usual 15 knot headwind most of the way. We
had HF contact with Brazzaville, Congo while in their area on 9703 kHz,
the daytime HF control frequency for most of Western Africa. Here you
hear Accra, Nouakchott, Brazzaville, and Kinshasa and many others all
talk more or less at the same time in French and English and on the same
frequency. What a mess!
In Angola, we only got radio contact after getting within VHF range of
Luanda. We soon realized that it was a very busy international airport
with loads of traffic, but without radar control. It sounded like an
accident waiting to happen. The controllers are very good and are using
VOR radials, DME and altitudes for separation to the best of their
ability, but they really ought to have radar with that traffic volume.
Anyhow, we got safely on the ground, and Stefan told us later that the
big boys rely heavily on TCAS (which we don’t have of course).
Our sole reason for the stopover in Angola was to fill up with Avgas.
Had we flown directly from Lomé (Togo) to Ondangwe (Namibia), we might
have made it there without a headwind, but we wanted to shorten the
flights and enjoy São Tomé for a few days on the way.
Avgas is not always available, even in Luanda. Stefan van Wyk, the
Namibian boss of
Angola Air
Services was our valuable contact and arranged everything for us:
fuel, overflight and landing clearances, immigration formalities,
transfers and the hotel. It would have been impossible to do all this
directly. Luanda is so full of businessmen these days that the few
decent hotels are generally fully booked and therefore overpriced. As
for clearances, Stefan had to send one of his employees to the civil
aviation authorities’ office personally the day before we were due to
arrive, and he had to sit and wait all day to extract the clearance
number from them. Apparently they had ‘lost’ our request for clearance
that Stefan had forwarded to them weeks before. He charged us 100 US$
for that and we found that very reasonable considering the time spent by
his staff and the inefficiency of the civil aviation office.
We had been told by the Angola embassy in Bern before leaving
Switzerland that there was no need for us to get a visa if we just
stayed one night in the country, but as a precaution, we both wore our
pilot shirts with striped lapels and air crew badges. We needn’t have
done so, though, as we taxied straight to Angola Air Services on arrival
and Stefan’s staff took our passports to Immigration for us.
Upon arrival, one of the staff transported Flemming to Sonangol to order
a 200 litre barrel of Avgas. It took an age for them to turn up with it,
and even then, Stefan’s staff had to be recruited to pump it into the
wings. Their electric transfer pump had not been used for a while, and
its filter needed to be cleaned. After the right wing was done the
suction hose dropped into the barrel because they hadn’t clamped it
properly to the pump, so it was necessary to improvise even further. The
fuel had to be decanted into a bucket that was eventually held over one
of the boys’ head to transfer the fuel using a siphoning hose that
Flemming was able to provide. Altogether the refuelling operation took
almost 3 hours from the time it was ordered so it was 5.30 p.m. before
we were ready to be transferred to the hotel, smack in the middle of
rush hour time. (Actually, the ‘rush-hour’ lasts all day from about 6
a.m. to at least 8 p.m.). It took 2 and a half hours to drive 5
kilometres to our hotel through the dusty, polluted streets of Luanda,
advancing at the pace of about 1 knot!
We shared the (blessfully) air conditioned van with some of Stefan’s
pilots who said we were no doubt happy that we only had to spend one
night there. Like in Gao, I prayed that nothing would go wrong the next
morning to prevent us from getting away! The young pilots that we met
were from New Zealand and South Africa. They come to Luanda to earn good
money and gain flying hours to make them more marketable elsewhere.
The hotel restaurant was reached by walking down some steps through a
building site, but the location of the restaurant itself was pleasant
enough right by the beach with swaying palm trees.
After our meal, we collapsed, exhausted, into bed, only to be woken up
less than 5 hours later by Reception. Our driver had misunderstood his
instructions and turned up at 3 a.m. instead of 4 a.m. We had, in fact,
wanted to be picked up at 5 a.m. but we’d been told by one of Stefan’s
staff the day before that to be sure to avoid the traffic jams it would
be best to accompany the pilots again, and that meant leaving at 4 a.m.
As it was, the driver didn’t even pick up the pilots. We arrived at the
airport at 4 a.m. and had to wait for about an hour before the
operations staff arrived to take care of filing the flight plan, the
General Declaration and traffic form to the airport operations office.
The handling fee which Stefan charged us for various apron side trips to
and from Sonangol offices, airport operations offices and transport to
and from the hotel was only US$ 100 and it was worth every cent of it!
Although most of the ground based radio beacons don’t work and there is
limited VHF coverage, we still had to pay a rather steep navigation fee
of 159 US$. We had a 7-hour flight ahead of us and could have done with
more sleep, but at least we got in the air by about 6:30 a.m. shortly
after Stefan’s Lear jet which was headed for southern Angola and on to
Gaborone, Botswana. What a relief to be back in the air again.
Thanks: Stefan van Wyk, Angola Air Services |
Luanda airport is very busy but has no radar
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