Luanda to Livingstone, Zambia

17 - 19 Oct 07

The famous Victoria Falls

We soon reached our cruising level of FL90 (min. IFR) and as expected we had a 25 – 30 knot easterly headwind. For the first hour we were in IMC with occasional rain but no activity on the stormscope. After about an hour we lost VHF contact and were transferred to 5565 kHz. We heard on the same frequency Stefan’s Learjet moon-rocket D2-EBN shooting up to FL410 above everybody else, and he would clearly overtake us soon on his way to Gaborone, Botswana.
Soon we were in VMC with ground contact and decided to go down to FL70 (2000 ft above ground) which improved our groundspeed significantly to 135 knots as the headwind was much weaker this close to ground. We were flying over very inhospitable terrain, mountainous and with forests with little sign of human activity. Later we flew along a river with remote villages with no apparent roads leading to them.
After 3 hours we were approaching the town of Luena, and contacted them by VHF for traffic information. The airport turned out to be quite busy, and although we had informed Luena information about our position, level and estimates, he still cleared a departing military jet towards Luanda to FL220 climbing on collision course through our level of FL90. Fortunately the pilot had understood our message, saw us on his TCAS and stopped his climb at FL80. We soon saw him whizzing by at high speed below us.
When out of the Luena traffic area, we went back down to FL70 to improve our ground speed. It was now about 11 o’clock local time, and the thermals were getting strong with small puffy cumulus above us with a base around 12000 feet. It would soon be impractical to top the cumulus and thermals, so we decided to stay at FL70 about 3000 feet above ground. Angela badly wanted to land somewhere else, but there are no other international airports in this remote area, so we spent the last 3 hours being bumped around in the thermals.