There’s something to be said about the last day of an adventure. Because you know it’s the last day, you tend to want to live it fully. You don’t really want it to end but at the same time, since you know it will end, you want to make the best of it.
On a ferry flight, however, it’s not exactly the same. It’s not like you can divert and go sight-see some other place along your route. You are tasked with getting you and the aircraft to destination in due time.
So, off we went crossing yet another large body of water. This time, it was the Gulf of Oman and the north part of the Arabian Sea.
Unfortunately, we only saw the view once we were within reach of the Indian coast. The humidity was so intense during the crossing that we just had this hazy sky ahead of us. So, up went the cardboard boxes to reduce the heat and down went our eyes to focus on flying the instruments.
Once we reached India, the fun began! Although all of our paperwork was perfectly filed, the Indian ATC didn’t seem aware of our arrival. Initially, they asked us to turn around insisting we weren’t cleared to fly in Indian airspace. Imagine that!
Before I go on, I must stress the insanity at play here. The biggest problem we face as ferry pilots is that we are really only cleared to land at the airports on our route. The aircraft are being exported from the United States to their final destination via all the stops along the way. Every time the aircraft change countries, they are only authorized to land at the airport specified in our flight plan. So, any deviation can be authorized due to weather, but creates a paperwork nightmare, which is why we don’t take no for an answer. If we are initially told that we aren’t cleared, we press on. 100% of the time, we are cleared, but the air traffic controllers simply haven’t been informed yet or they are looking at the wrong data.
Furthermore, turning around is simply not an option. It took us close to 6 hours to fly from Muscat to the Indian shores and 3.4 hours to reach Ahmedabad. So, we simply don’t have the range to turn around or go anywhere else.
After submitting the various file numbers, company names, etc. we were granted permission to proceed to Ahmedabad… at a maximum altitude of 1000 feet! Luckily, the land is totally flat on that route and there are tons of places to land should we have engine troubles.
We saw flocks of flamingoes fly and lots of salt farms, part of the Rann of Kutch. These farms go as far as the eye can see. We must have spent at least 90 minutes over flying them at 90 knots. That’s a lot of salt.
As we got closer to Ahmedabad, we were transferred from one ATC to another, but we were asked to remain below 1000 feet for most of the route. Finally, for the final 10 NM, we were allowed to climb to 2000 feet. This allowed us to have much better visibility and to spot the runway a few minutes before touchdown.
The welcoming committee was really impressive as you can see in the pictures below.
In a future article, I will share what I learned on the city of Ahmedabad.
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Flight time: 9.4 hours
Distance: 770 nm (1428 kilometers or 887 statute miles)
