A flat tyre

‘Mission Adjusts Frequently’ is an informal phrase we pilots often use in PNG to describe a last minute change of plans, either through oversight or necessity. A few weeks ago I had an experience that fell firmly in the latter camp.

Most Thursdays, one of the Hagen-based pilots flies out to Tari for a few short runs from our base there. My programme was relatively straightforward - one run to Oksapmin and two runs to Mougulu.

The weather was good and my first Mougulu run was uneventful. I had a fast turnaround in Tari, where I removed all the passenger seats and our base staff loaded 1000 kg of store goods for Oksapmin and topped up the fuel for the trip. I landed in Oksapmin just after 12:00 and as I taxied into the parking bay, I felt the right wheel was a bit draggy. Assuming I had found a bit of soft ground, I applied extra power to get the aeroplane into a good position and then shut off the engine.

When I opened the cockpit door, the agent told me there was something wrong with my right wheel. Aha, I thought, not soft ground after all. I proceeded with my normal routine - chocks, tail stand, checking the propeller and wheels, and sure enough, the right tyre was noticeably deflated. I made the usual joke that the tyre was only flat on the bottom, set about unstrapping the cargo so it could be offloaded, and jumped on the radio to MAF HQ in Hagen to let them know what had happened.

I knew I wasn’t going anywhere until another plane could come from Hagen with engineers, tools, and a replacement tyre. I checked in on the radio every fifteen minutes or so, as the bookings office and engineers asked me questions and put together a plan. Thankfully another pilot was doing a line check in the Hagen area and his programme could be altered to accommodate a rescue mission that afternoon - otherwise I would have been spending the night in Oksapmin! (At no stage was I concerned about this prospect; the Oksapmin high school was founded by Glenda Giles, a New Zealand missionary, so I knew the community would look after a female MAF pilot from New Zealand. And I always carry a small bag in the plane with overnight essentials.)

As I waited for the plane to come, I chatted with people and considered options for the return home. The other aircraft had departed Hagen at 1:45, and would take around 45 minutes to reach Oksapmin. Changing the tyre would take at least an hour… so it would make sense for the other pilot to take my Oksapmin-Tari passengers, and collect the seats and Tari-Hagen passengers I had left behind, while I took the engineers straight back to Hagen. When the rescue crew arrived, they had come to the same conclusion.

I didn’t have a lot of fuel on board, expecting to only have to fly back to Tari, but I had enough to get to Hagen with the necessary reserves intact. Thankfully the weather held and I was able to fly more or less in a straight line, with a 10 kt tailwind to boot, landing just before 5 pm.

This was the first time I’d needed rescuing from a bush airstrip, and it was a good reminder that while we may feel like we’re out there flying around on our own, we are actually part of a much bigger team. I could trust that there was a plan being put together for me, even though I wasn’t privy to the conversations. And help is just a radio call away. I'm sure there are some life lessons there...

Oksapmin airstrip

'Hagen, we have a problem'

Engineers Franco and Markus change the tyre

Piano moving - PNG style

Recently, the Hunt family returned to NZ. Jess, Benji and Elliott were on the same MAF orientation as me, back in April 2019 in Cairns. They were the longest-serving family on our compound, and Benji’s engineering and teaching skills, and Jess’ hospitality gifting will be missed. But I look forward to catching up with them again on my next home assignment, and seeing what God does in the next chapter of their lives.

With Jess departing, I was keen to buy her piano. She warned me that it was horribly out of tune, but a few Youtube videos convinced me that with the right tools (and the right app) it shouldn’t be that hard to tune a piano. The bigger problem would be moving it from their house to mine.

I sent a request to the MAF PNG Facilities department, asking if they could spare four or five strong guys for an hour or so on a day I wasn’t flying, as we estimated the piano weighed 200 kg or more.

On my day off last week, three Facilities guys turned up and were about to start moving the piano when I told them to stop, so that I could explain the plan and the technique to them first! They roped in our two compound security guards as well, and we managed to get the piano out of the house and down the stairs.

The security guards disappeared, and the Facilities guys asked if they could finish moving it on Monday! When I told them no, they decided to go back to the base and get some more manpower.

An hour later they returned with three more guys, and between the six of them were able to carry it across the lawn and the carpark. By this stage it was threatening to rain, and when bigger drops started to fall, it was enough of an incentive to finish the job. I think they got it up the stairs faster than it had initially come down!

During the process, two conversations made me smile. The first was when they realised how heavy it was. “We thought it was going to be like Connie’s” (a digital piano). Obviously they didn’t get the memo about the 200 kg!

The second was when the piano was on the ground floor and someone lifted the lid and pressed a few keys. In astonishment he asked, “How does it make a sound when it’s not plugged in?” I opened the top and revealed the answers to both questions.

A couple of days after the move, I disassembled the accessible parts of the piano to give it a good clean and unstick some keys. Then, armed with my tuning kit (a Christmas present to myself) and app, I spent three hours tuning it. When I first played it afterwards, I was immediately transported to my happy place.

Getting the piano up the stairs before the rain comes!

Getting ready to reassemble and start tuning

Post Courier article

Hot on the heels of my Stuff article last year, I took up an invitation to answer questions for the Post Courier as well!

You can read the article here.

Photos from Christmas

 

Christmas Taskmaster event

Outdoor Christmas movie

Lights

Ready for Christmas dinner

My contribution! (Two large pavlovas weren't enough last year, so this year I made six smaller ones)

Expat Tales

An article was recently published about me on Stuff...

 The 'Expat Tales' series has an open invitation for Kiwis living overseas to share their stories. There was no harm in me writing in to share my own - and it might make a change from 'I went to London for my OE'.

The Stuff writer got back to me the very next day with a set of questions, and seemed genuinely interested to hear from me. So I responded to each one, determined not to shy away from talking openly about God, Jesus, and Christianity!

Several weeks passed and I wondered if it was going to be published. Then one Sunday morning, my email was running hot and my phone was pinging.

'Would you look at what I see as I browsed Stuff this morning...!'

'Great article and photos in Stuff!'

'I read your stuff article and liked it a lot'

'Famous in NZ, aye'

'What a wonderful article on Stuff! Who knows how the Lord will use it in the lives of the readers and beyond!'

'Good job!'

I was interested to see how much the article had been edited, and to my surprise and delight, it was mostly just formatting. There was only one sentence referring to Jesus' parable about seeking the lost sheep that was removed.

I'm thankful for the opportunity to write about Christian mission work and for it to have been published in a secular arena. So often, we think we can't talk about our faith for fear of offending someone. But if other people can rave about how their lives have been transformed by meditation / yoga / a vegan diet etc., why shouldn't we be able to talk about Jesus in normal, everyday conversation? Especially if the question is 'What inspired you to do this?'

Get-home-itis

‘Moresby, Sierra Delta Papa is holding within five miles of Telefomin below 7000, will call ops normal time 45 or landed.’

I made that radio call at 5:28 pm after a long and challenging day flying store goods and passengers out of Tabubil for various airstrips - Bak, Wobagen, and Eliptamin - and was on my way back ‘home’ to Telefomin. There had been a lot of cloud and rain in the Bak/Wobagen area, so I wasn’t able to fly the most direct route to get there. By the time I was on my way back from Eliptamin, it looked like most of the clouds had rained out, leaving a high overcast layer and the ridges were clear. Maybe I would have some relief at the end of the day!

As I departed Tabubil and climbed over the Hindenburg Wall, the message light on my tracker started flashing.

"Hi BRI, wx is not looking good. Heavy build towards the wall. See if you could approach from TH low point. Heavily raining at the moment. standby on the VHF as well."

"wind blowing the clouds towards Feramin as well. The tip of the crocs tail towards Feramin is still visible as we look through the rain."

I was well in the clear and able to descend towards the Tifalmin (TH) valley, only ten miles from Telefomin. The ‘crocodile tail’ is a low ridge on the opposite side of the valley from Telefomin, and I could see it clearly, so I flew towards it. Only 3 miles away. But I couldn’t see the Telefomin airstrip - or even any of the buildings surrounding it - because of the rain.

There was a clear weather ‘pocket’ along the crocodile tail, so I slowed the aeroplane down and considered my options. Fuel - I had over 2 hours’ on board, so that wasn’t an issue. Daylight was not yet a concern. Weather was my biggest problem, but my previous experience of Telefomin was that rain showers can come and go quite quickly, so there was a chance it might clear up - especially since at my altitude there was a strong 20 knot wind blowing through as well. I decided to wait for 15 minutes or so and informed Moresby of my plan.

‘Get-home-itis’ is a phrase most pilots are familiar with and many have experienced personally. It’s the self-inflicted pressure to push on into bad weather, when you probably shouldn’t, simply because you’re almost at your destination. Statistically, it counts for a significant proportion of fatal accidents. I was conscious of this and decided that if I couldn’t get in, or the weather deteriorated, I would simply turn around, fly back to Tabubil, and spend the night there.

After four or five passes (by this time in radio comms with the base staff on the ground, who told me the rain at the airstrip was lessening) I could see some buildings that I knew would lead me to the runway. Carefully, I flew towards them, ready to turn around at any time if I lost visibility. But thankfully, a few seconds later a pocket opened up where the rain was lighter and I could see more and more buildings, and soon was able to make out the runway itself.

After I landed, I noted the time - 5:36. It had only been 8 minutes since I made the radio call to Moresby, but felt a lot longer!

Flying an aircraft is not just about manipulating the controls or getting from A to B, but also being aware of what’s going on around you and making appropriate decisions. MAF places a strong emphasis on these ‘soft skills’ using scenario-based training, which puts us in good stead when we encounter difficult situations in the real world!

The Telefomin bowl, with the airstrip to the left and Crocodile Tail to the right

My route

A single landing

“How many coffee bags can you take?”

That was the first question asked of me by Kos, the local MAF agent, when he greeted me as I opened the door after landing at Sengapi. I steeled myself for what lay ahead.

You see, I hadn’t landed at Sengapi to pick up coffee bags. The notes attached to my flight programme for this particular leg indicated that I was picking up a young girl as a medical transfer patient, who would require a stretcher.

The airstrip at Sengapi is short, flat and at a high altitude, which means that we are payload-limited for take-off to around 500 kg, or about ten coffee bags. For every passenger on board, that means fewer bags.

I already had three passengers on board whom I had picked up earlier, and of course the patient was my first priority. “Let me check the plane,” I told Kos, “and then I will calculate everything and let you know how many coffee bags I can take.”

When there’s a flurry of activity around the plane, I’ll often deliberately ignore it and go through my routine. Check the tyres, wings, propeller, open the doors. As I did so, I started making a mental list of tasks: Take the seats out so the stretcher could fit. Get the stretcher out of the pod and my patient onto it. Calculate how many coffee bags - five. Actually, the coffee would need to be loaded before the patient. But how would I physically fit five coffee bags in the plane with a stretcher? I decided not to take all five.

“The most important thing about this flight is taking the sick girl,” I told Kos. “So, I will take only two coffee bags this time. I can’t fit any more in, otherwise they might fall on her. I will take the seats out, then put the stretcher harness in, then load the coffee, then load the patient. All right?”

He nodded and I set to work. There were plenty of willing volunteers, but some tasks were easier for me to do myself rather than try to explain how the equipment worked.

With the two coffee bags and my patient on board, I calculated the cost of the fares and freight. Kos handed me the money, mostly in K20 notes and smaller. “This is for the patient and guardian. This is for the other passenger. This is for the coffee.”

I started counting it, but Kos wasn’t finished. “I have fifteen more coffee bags to go to Hagen, one passenger for Madang. Three passengers next week for Goroka. And I want to buy lots of Bibles. How many do you have?” He had seen the Bible box in the cargo pod.

“Kos, you need to not talk to me while I am counting the money,” I said. “Be quiet. Otherwise I have to start again.”

I noticed that the sick girl was getting a bit restless. Knowing that it was going to be a while before we took off, I asked the crowd of people, “Where is the person travelling with her?” A woman came forward. “Can you please come up, sit with her and hold her hand?”

After I had finalised the flight paperwork, I had Kos on one side asking for Bibles and a group of onlookers asking if they could change their money for newer notes. I did the best I could with what I had, and in the blink of an eye, swapped from mobile banking service to Bible distributor. Kos handed me 200 Kina for the ten Tok Pisin Bibles that I had. Other people bought Bible comics. My box was nearly empty.

“When you come back next week, bring twenty more Bibles,” Kos told me. “And can you please give me my commission money now?”

I sighed to myself. I was supposed to be attending a monthly pilots’ meeting at 2 pm, and it was already 1:30. But what was one more delay? I counted out his money and got him to sign the appropriate form.

“All done? Good. I’m going now.” I started closing the doors, told the woman who had been sitting on the floor with the sick girl to sit in the seat closest to her, and helped her put her seat belt on. My other passengers boarded, and I gave a quick safety briefing before praying for the sick girl and our flight to Hagen.

Just before I climbed into the cockpit, Kos had one last thing to tell me. “Remember I have fifteen more coffee bags for Hagen, one passenger for Madang, three for Goroka.”

This was not just one day, but one landing, in the life of a MAF pilot / ticket officer / Bible seller / cargo handler / {insert other roles here}!

Helping another agent at another airstrip with his paperwork

This story was published on the MAF PNG website.