Riding The Midnight Flyer

When the passengers do arrive, there are only seven. Some phone calls confirm number eight is not coming. Now, the task requires only one Navajo – we could have stayed in bed until lunchtime. Another coffee starts a five hour wait. Charter pilots spend half their time waiting. Charter planes- unlike airlines- do not drop their passengers then fly another task before returning to pick up the first group. Much of the time, charter pilots deliver their charges, sometimes to out-of-the-way places, then can do nothing but wait, all day if necessary, until their passengers are ready to leave. At such times, it helps if the pilot has a good book, a crossword, or is studying for his senior commercial pilots’ licence. Charter pilots are consequently well read!

The time drags around to noon when we finally depart for the Cessnock pick-up flying a ‘dead leg’ (no payload) out of Albury. As we pass Bathurst we find weather starting to build and we make a mental note to return a different route. At Cessnock, we are due to pick up six passengers -there are seven waiting for us, with a mountain of luggage. “But you took seven last time,” pleads the one we have to leave behind. “But the booking was for six, the quote was for six and the plane is for six,” we try to point out. Nevertheless, the phones were to run hot even as we taxied out to Cessnock’s narrow 18/36 strip. As it was, we had to forsake fuel, which meant a refuelling stop in Albury en route to Essendon – and that wasn’t in the quote either. Our passengers, having consumed copious amounts of whiskey, beer and Coke en route, found the stop at Albury something of a relief. But the stopover cost us time and the fear now is that we may arrive too late at our eventual destination, Adelaide, to get fuel for the ‘dead leg’ return to Albury. Without fuel, the plane and its pilots will have to stop overnight in Adelaide (and me with not so much as a toothbrush) and that was not in the quote, either.

It is late afternoon as we climb out of Albury and the CBs are building. Our planned track to Eildon Weir and Essendon is blocked by a monstrous black cell, looking even more menacing in the fading light of the sunset and warning us off with lightning streaking through its tops. Melbourne flight service advises severe turbulence reported in the Eildon Weir area but aircraft report a smoother track via Mangalore.

We turn right, dial up Mangalore and prepare a new estimate, giving only a cursory thought to the extra minutes the diversion will cost us. The Navajo purrs on, the rumble of the Lycomings as reassuring as the red hot glow of the exhaust, seen through a ventilation port in the side of the nacelle, a glow that turns brighter as the night turns blacker.

We brush through the clouds, the turbulence comes in waves. A sudden jolt brings a strangled cry from the cabin and raucous laughter from the passenger’s less nervous mates. The Jim Beam is starting to take hold. The Navajo tracks clear of the cell that is conveniently dumping buckets on Eildon Weir, but another cell looms just west of Mangalore. With any luck . . .

Our clearance into Essendon takes us between the two cells and the lights of Melbourne appear on the other side as we descend through lower patches of cloud. But the agony of our nervous passengers is not over yet. We join the queue for Essendon’s runway 26 and, for sequencing, radar takes us well to the east before we turn for a lumpy approach to the runway lights.

At engine stop, the passengers dash for the terminal, seeking more relief. We seek out a fuel truck and arrange his visit to the Navajo but it takes almost half an hour and two more approaches to the refueller before he arrives. We ask for full tanks – he tells us he doesn’t think he has that much in his truck and may have to go back for more.

It is our turn to be relieved when it turns out he does have enough, but the new delay has lessened our chances of finding fuel in Adelaide and increased the chances of staying overnight.

The Navajo, minus two passengers and half the luggage climbs out of Essendon into the teeth of westerlies reaching at least 40 knots on the nose. The DME shows a ground speed of only 140 knots -we are going to be even later at Adelaide.

Things are quieter back in the cabin; the descent into Adelaide wakes up someone, who sticks his head into the cockpit to ask how far to go.

By 11pm local time, Adelaide is all but deserted. We share the tarmac with a Learjet on a courier run to Melbourne.

Although our office had phoned ahead for fuel earlier in the day, we have arrived an hour late- the refueller was due to knock off at 10pm. But our query to the tower about fuel brings a response from a car to say the refueller has been waiting for us and is on his way, lady luck has finally turned our way. With fuel on board and tail winds aloft we waste no time.

At 9,000 feet, we show a ground speed of 230 knots and are back in Albury in record time. By then it was 2am- but it was to be someone else’s turn to see the dawn and start the helter-skelter all over again.