It has been a long time since I have posted, and quite a roller coaster ride to say the least. I am still in Lagos, and have now been away from home for more than three months even though I was only supposed to be here for two months. I have been flying 6 days a week for the most part, since there has been no one else to fly the aircraft until now. The 3rd First officer (Gladstone) had just finished his line check. With Gladstone here, we now have 3 First Officers, and 3 Captains authorized to fly the two Q400s that we currently have.
The next two aircraft are now due to be delivered no earlier than March to my knowledge. We still have only one line-trainer, if we had more than one if would have greatly increased the rate of training new pilots, which when trained would allow me to finally travel home. I am having a good time out here and am enjoying the flying, but missing Christmas, New-Years, and being away from all my family and friends for so long has dampened my spirits along with the rest of the Q400 pilots I’m sure.
Above is a picture of my crew and I after landing in Katsina. We were the first Q400 to ever land here. As you can see, my hair has gotten quite long, I have become stubborn and decided not to cut it until I am about to travel home.
I received some supplies from the USA thanks to my family sending them to Norbert (Arik 737 Captain) and him bringing them over on the start of his rotation. The most important item I received was contact lenses, I just had ran out of them when I received the package – it would have been tough to fly the aircraft blindly.
Tour of Nigeria
One of my favorite routes I have done so far is Lagos – Akure – Abuja – Katsina – Abuja – Akure – Lagos. I call it the “tour of Nigeria” because you fly from the southern part of the country to the northern portion, and back again.
This picture was taken during descent into Katsina. As you can see, it is very dry and desert like. The winds were also stronger here at 20 knots from the North.
First “Night-stop”
My first overnight (or “night-stop” as they refer to them here) was in Abuja, Denim Air who operates the Q300’s had stopped flying to renegotiate contracts (I think…) so we picked up a Lagos – Abuja – Katsina – Abuja – Kano – Abuja route. There were a ton of Boeing 747s on the ground in Kano, I have never seen so many in one place!
The Abuja night-stop was very short but it sure was sweet staying at the Sheraton hotel there. It is very nice with several restaurants to choose from. Gustavo, our captain had his heart set on eating steak so we went to the restaurant that had steak, I ended up having this delicious grilled fish with vegetables and mashed potatoes. They were playing “honkey tonk” music in the place…
I had them stop the music for a little bit so I could play the piano in the restaurant. After dinner, I went up to my room which was very nice by Nigerian standards. For breakfast I had some waffles delivered to my room.
Flying into Abuja is always fun, each time I have been there we land on runway 22, and although they apparently have an ILS, it is always INOP requiring us to do the VOR DME 22 approach. Fortunately the Flight Management System gives you a “glideslope” so you have vertical and horizontal navigation just like an ILS approach.
The visibility has been poor almost everywhere, usually not increasing to more than 5 km. We are delayed almost every morning due to weather when flying to Osubi and Akure since they are VFR airports requiring a 1,500 ft. ceiling and 5KM visibility to land.
So far I have operated the Q400 at the following airports: Lagos, Benin, Akure, Osubi, Ilorin, Abuja, Katsina, Oyu, and Kano.
After the nightstop in Abuja, we returned to Lagos and were scheduled to do two round trips to Osubi and everything was going fine until we got until we realized we couldn’t fly to Osubi and back the 2nd time legally due to the duty time aloft regulation (explained below). The company decided that we should do the flight to Osubi which we could do legally and then have a night-stop there.
Here in Nigeria, the duty limitations are more restrictive in a sense than the FAA rules I am used too. In the USA, for the type of flying we are doing, we could not fly more than 8 hours in a day, and must not be on duty for more than 14 hours. These limitations are the same in Nigeria, but we have one more regulation which is called “Duty time aloft.” In essence, 30 min. before your first scheduled departure, the clock is started, and you must complete your last flight of the day 30 min. before 11 hours from when the clock was started comes to and end.
So we departed Abuja at 08:00 , therefore the 11 hour clock started at 07:30. Add 11 hours to this, and you get 18:30, so we must complete our last flight at 18:00. The captain does have the authority to add one more hour to this if he feels he can do it safely, and we do not have more than the minimum amount of cabin crew members. So when we carry 2 cabin crew members, we can add one hour, but when we carry 3 (which we sometimes do on busier trips), the extra hour can not be added since the crew is augmented by definition. This normally isn’t an issue except when our morning departures are delayed several hours due to weather.
The other Q400 (on its way back from Abuja) in Osubi was able to carry most if not all of the passengers we were supposed to take back from Osubi to Lagos.
The cabin crew wasn’t to happy about the unexpected nightstop in Osubi, I was somewhat excited to see what it was like there, but was also tired from two long days of flying and anxious to get some rest.
The rooms weren’t to bad, there were only a few bugs, the lights worked, and the bed was comfortable. The bathroom though wasn’t so nice, I didn’t even attempt to use the shower which was quite dirty. I met Gustavo downstairs near the bar and restaurant and ordered some food which took almost two hours! There was no one in the restaurant, we weren’t sure what took so long. My food was pretty tasty though, I think I had some sort of spaghetti and a fruit salad.
For breakfast I had french toast, pancakes, and fruit salad. Unfortunately due to arriving late and leaving early, I wasn’t able to check out anything outside in the area.
While walking out to the aircraft, we got to see in person, the thick fog that always delays our flights to here from Lagos in the morning.
In a relatively short amount of time, we were above the clouds and on our way to Lagos. The flight from Osubi to Lagos is relatively busy for the Pilot Not Flying (PNF). Here is a list of the radio calls required for this flight:
On departure from Osubi:
Call Osubi Tower with estimated times of arrival (ETA) to destination.
Initiate Contact with Benin for clearance to higher altitude (10,000 max)
Call Osubi and tell them you have two-way communication with Benin.
Initiate contact with Lagos (very difficult on this congested frequency) for clearance to your cruising altitude, usually 21,000 on this flight.
Example of Call:
Lagos Control, Arik Air 4003
Arik Air 4003, go ahead
Arik Air 4003, Osubi – Lagos, DH8-D, Estimating BEN @ 1514, OK @ 1522, MOPAD @ 1528, and LAG @ 1602, 66-4 crew, 3 hours endurance, 5N-BKV, FL80 climbing FL100, requesting FL 210.
Arik Air 4003, cleared OSB – LAG A609, climb maintain FL210, report reaching.
Cleared OSB – LAG A609, climb maintain 210, report reaching, Arik Air 4003
Call Benin and tell them you have two-way comm with Lagos.
Call Company Operations and tell them Off-blocks and air-borne time out of Osubi, number of passengers aboard, and ETA at Lagos.
Copy current ATIS (weather) from Lagos.
Contact Lagos approach, given squawk code, several descents, heading changes, and finally approach clearance.
Contact Lagos Tower for landing clearance
While doing this, he must also operate the aircraft systems, run the checklists, and monitor the pilot flying. This dramatically increases the workload of the crew, which is why I tend to always fly with the auto-pilot ON during departure so I can spend more time monitoring systems and what the PNF is doing. I still do departures with the auto-pilot off out of less busy airports like Katsina where the job of the PNF is much easier to maintain proficiency, and for the pure enjoyment of hand flying.
Sometimes I’ll look back at the wing and gently rock it up and down in disbelief that I get to do what I do.
This is a picture of me after landing in Lagos ending the day, I had a bit of a beard since I didn’t pack a razor, hadn’t showered since the day before, and was pretty fatigued. We almost ran into another problem that day as well, as pilots we are not allowed to fly more than 30 hours in a 7 day period. Upon landing in Lagos we had flown 29.6 hours in the previous 7 days!
The next day I flew with Sean to Akure – Abuja – Akure and back to Lagos, it was my first time flying with him. I also flew with him the following day, just one Osubi turn and I was back at the hotel very tired after 6 days straight of flying, which required me to have a day off the next day. We must have one 24 hour period of rest (midnight to midnight) once every 7 days by regulation.
Malaria
I take Doxycycline Hyclate as an anti-malarial medication everyday. It isn’t 100% effective though, as I unfortunately had to learn the hard way.
The afternoon after flying with Sean, the 6th straight day of flying, I had a chicken sandwich and spring rolls for lunch. A couple hours later I was not feeling very well, had strong abdominal pain and felt weak. I then threw-up my lunch, and had diarrhea. I thought it was food-poisoning, so I went to the restaurant and told them how I felt and what I had eaten so they could take the necessary precautions. That night was rough, I could not drink water without throwing up which I did several more times, and the abdominal pain would not go away. When I finally woke up the next morning, I did not feel any better, and was very dehydrated (since I could not drink water and had diarrhea), had no appetite and was feeling very weak and sick. So I got a ride to the doctor and told them I thought I had food poisoning. I was given some medication to get rid of the diarrhea which would relieve my abdominal pain as well, and just in case, they took a blood test to see if I had Malaria. I wasn’t worried, I didn’t think I had malaria since I didn’t have any of the common symptoms: sore throat, sweating, shaking, fever, etc.
20 minutes later though, to my surprise, I was informed I did have Malaria and was given medication to knock the parasites out of my system. Vomiting and diarrhea are more uncommon symptoms to my knowledge but some people do get them. After taking the medication I immediately felt better, no more abdominal pain, no more diarrhea, and was able to take in a little water at a time. I did vomit one more time, it was just water though so it wasn’t painful.
I was able to eat a little bit of food, but still didn’t have much of an appetite. I slept almost all day long, the medication really knocks you out. My body was continuously feeling better though. The following day I felt 10x better and although I was still dehydrated and feeling weak, I had no pain and could eat a larger amount of food and drink more water at a time. I just relaxed in the hotel resting up, Abel, a Spanish pilot at my hotel got Malaria the same day I got it so we went together the following day to see if the Malaria was out of our system. Now I was actually nervous for the results, I felt like it was out of my system, but it sure was great to hear the good news, both of us were clean, the Malaria had been cleansed from our bodies.
For more information about Malaria, this website is a great: http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/
I was given one more day of rest, Gustavo had gotten Malaria too a couple days before I did. But we both recovered in time to fly together again soon, starting another 6 days straight of flying after the 4 days I had off to recover from Malaria.
This picture was taken on the ground in Benin after a heavy rain shower passed through the area. The weather this time of year has been quite pleasant from a non-flying point of view. There are very few thunderstorms, but the visibility is quite poor, especially in the morning as I mentioned earlier. But the clouds due lower the temperatures a little bit so it feels good being outside.
Pizza
Abel showed me a couple stores full of things like peanut butter, jelly, wheat bread, deodorant, soap, and other various items which I greatly appreciated. We had lunch at Mr. Biggs which is a fast food place with ice cream, pizza, burgers, and chicken. The supreme pizza I had there was very good. I am used to it when restaurants and places that sell food do not have most of the items on the menu. When we went to Mr. Biggs, the Chicken place had no chicken, the burger place had no meat, the ice-cream place only had strawberry ice cream left and none of the fancy toppings as advertised.
As you can see above, I have a new outfit, I bought the material at a nearby store and had the same tiller who made my last one sew it.
2nd Abuja Night-Stop
Less than a week ago, we had another night-stop in Abuja, this time was also because we could not legally finish our final leg to Lagos since it would exceed the duty time aloft limitation. It was nice though having much more time to relax on the overnight. I had a cappuccino, played some piano, ate some delicious dessert, had a tasty dinner at the Italian restaurant, and in the morning I enjoyed a large breakfast buffet.
Well that’s all for now, I know it had been a long time since I last posted so wanted to get some updates on here. There are other things I would like to blog about, but don’t want to put to much in one post here. I am not sure at this point when I am traveling back home, but hopefully I will know soon – there is a pilot meeting this Saturday, so maybe I’ll get some questions answered.