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A R C H I V E S

CAPTAIN CARGO

Captain Cargo grew up in Southern Africa, where, at the age of nineteen, he started flying by accident. After ten years spraying tsetse flies, locusts and other nasty insects, interspersed with spells flying tourists and Hemingway wannabes around the Okavango Delta and Kalahari Desert, he moved to the United Kingdom. After obtaining a UK ATPL, he joined an airline that flies freight for a major parcel delivery company. He has been doing it ever since, and now flies a Boeing 757 freighter around Europe, mainly at night. Mail to: CaptainCargo@aircargonews.com

What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?

     Last week I was in Brussels for the weekend, and ran into Ken, who’s been flying freight almost as long as I have. He joined the company as a low-time pilot after a few years in operations, and with our average three hundred hours a year, it’s taken him ten years to get the hours for a command. He got promoted recently and has just been checked out on the 757.
     Over a few beers down the Hairy Canary, we start reminiscing over the old days on the Electra, and one trip in particular just after I myself had been promoted which led to him having to buy a lot of beer. We’re early for once, the main cargo door closed, APU up and running, and I ask Ken to get up clearance. It’s Friday night and we’ve got the weekend in Brussels, arriving early enough to have a few tonight. He calls Ground and is told that we haven’t got a flight plan.
     “What you mean, no flight-plan?”, I ask him when he interrupts my conversation with the rather attractive young handling agent.
     “There’s no flight plan. They don’t have one for us.”
     I pick up my headset, giving the young lady a busy grin. She gives a sort of half-curtsy and slides out of the flight deck door.
     “Tegel Ground, ————625”
     “—————625, Go ahead.”
     “We should have a flight plan to Brussels. Departing 1945.”
     “———625, we do not have a flight plan for your flight.”
     “We do this flight every night, “ I say, wondering who in ops has messed up.
     “Sorry, but I am not familiar with your flight number. I would suggest you come in the tower and file a flight plan.”
     I take off my headset. I resist the urge to recite my dictionary of expletives.
     “Ask if we can file a flight plan over the radio”. I instruct Ken, and get my mobile phone out, in those days a fairly new device. A short call to ops and they say the flight plan should be automatic, but they’ll send a new one. Ken’s had no luck with ATC.
     “Should be through in a minute, “ I say, indicating no to the guy outside who’s gesticulating at me regarding removing the GPU. We sit for a minute, headsets on, hoping they call us. There’s something I cannot quite put my finger on. Something’s not right. There should be a flight plan.
     “Call him”. I tell Ken.
     He calls again, and the German voice, with a slight trace of annoyance, answers back. No, there is still no flight plan. Once again, he suggests filing one in the tower. I wave at the ramp agent who is looking at his watch and holding his arms out as if to say “What’s the problem?”, indicating that we need the steps. Al, the flight engineer, opens the door and the agent appears on the flight deck a few seconds later, looking flustered. I explain our predicament and a few minutes later he’s driving me to the tower.
     On the desk in Briefing I pick up a flight plan and am trying to remember how to fill one in when a the guy behind the desk asks,
     “Where are you flying to?”
     “Brussles”, I tell him, “the company has forgotten to file a flight plan.” “What’s your flight number?”
     “——625”, I reply, writing the aircraft registration.
     “I’ve got a plan for that flight”, he says”, “In fact I received another one a few minutes ago.”
     “That’s not possible”, I say, “we asked for start-up and the controller says he doesn’t have a plan.”
     “I don’t understand”, he says. “Try again. I’ll talk to the controller.”
     The agent takes me back to the aircraft, making a point of looking at his watch again. Back on board, I tell Ken to call for start up.
     “I told you, we don’t have a flight plan for your flight”, the controllerreplies, sounding really pissed off now.
     “What the hell is going on?”, I say, flummoxed. I’m just about to let rip at the controller when I realise what’s been bothering me. The frequency we’re talking on is pretty busy. Yet I haven’t seen another aircraft taxi-ing since we closed the doors. I look at the airfield plate in front of me, at the radio.
     “You dipstick, Ken. You’ve got the wrong frequency dialled up.” The frequency is one digit removed from the ground frequency we should be using.
     Later, we find out we’ve been talking to Berlin Templehof Ground, which is only a few miles away.The controller we were speaking to must have been wondering where we were parked. No doubt he was as confused as us.
     Ten minutes later, forty minutes behind schedule, we’re airborne. In the cruise, Ken asks me what he should put the delay down to.
     “Air Traffic Control”, I say. “It’s not too far from the truth.” We all burst out laughing.
     “And the beer's on you”, I add.

MERCY CARGO TO
SOUTH AFRICA

     We are struck with a thought in the middle of the worst business run of months and years in airline and air cargo history. Most of air cargo, despite the lousy business climate can take for granted many things about our lives. But elsewhere people are suffering, not from questions of financial upheaval but in a battle for survival.
     For example, millions of people face hunger and even death by starvation in Southern Africa brought about by the worst drought in a decade.
     Also, the impact of AIDS has caused drastic food shortages. Crops have dried-up in the fields and desperate families are selling all they have, including precious livestock, to buy food.
     Prices for the dwindling supply of available food in the market have soared.
     This agricultural, social and economic disaster is affecting more than 14.6 million people in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
     In Ethiopia and elsewhere, the situation is frightening.
     Thousands have already died and those weakened by hunger are increasingly susceptible to disease.
     Particularly hard-hit have been the poorest and most vulnerable, especially the elderly, the children, AIDS affected orphans and chronically ill, and pregnant and nursing women.
     Southern Africa has the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in the world.
     In some countries, more than 30 percent of the adult population is infected.
     One organization with roots in air cargo is Anaheim, California-based Mercy Airlift.
     What Mercy Airlift does and has done since 1970, is gather consignments of donated and purchased relief supplies and foodstuffs and moves the goods to trouble spots in need around the world.
     Now needing lift and support to move meals to Ethiopia, Mr. Andrew “Andy” Pike who moved over to Mercy Airlift from a career as Captain aboard Flying Tigers all-cargo aircraft puts it this way:
     "The lifeblood of our organization comes from charitable contributions - monetary donations and gifts-in-kind from corporate sponsors and individual donors. However, we cannot perform our duties in serving the growing numbers of disaster and poverty stricken people if we do not continually receive support from donors and volunteers.
     “A corporate sponsor becomes one of our special partners and co-sponsors of our missions. Mercy Airlift can offer visible recognition on our trucks and planes, as well as media coverage to those that provide us with the support we need to continue. We have the financial expertise of Merrill Lynch to assist in maximizing the tax benefits of our donors and corporate sponsors.”
     Contact toll free at: 1-877-90-MERCY (63729).
     “Over the years corporate sponsors have provided Mercy Airlift with the ability to conduct its life saving, disaster relief flights and services. These organizations recognize that the responsibility for providing the disaster relief flights and services conducted by Mercy Airlift are the social responsibility of each and every one of us both individually and corporately:
     Doug Hartman, Learnframe.com, S & J Service, Inc., Singapore Airlines, Pan Am, Lockheed Aircraft Company, McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Corporation, Christian Pilots Association, American Data Systems, Golden West Airlines, Pacific Air Academy, PVT and Associates, Threshold Technologies, White Hawke Industries, Baja Consultants, Equity Link Homes, Avion Graphics, Reolite Technologies, Dabon Organic, Dutch Trading Company, International Equity Holdings, Orion National Equity, West Coast Mortgage, Residential Resources Financial Services, Sterling Cruise Lines, OralSafe, Fleet Equipment, Webb Family Foundation, Aperon Technology, Precision Dynamics, Dr. Walt Mouiser.”
     Mercy Airlift has provided humanitarian assistance to disaster sites in over 60 countries, transporting millions of pounds of foods, medical services and supplies, reconstruction supplies and equipment valued in the tens of millions of dollars.
     “Through our corporate sponsors, partners, individual supporters and volunteers, we have been able to source, secure and replenish emergency supplies. These include food, medicine, temporary and permanent housing, as well as reconstruction equipment, educational and agricultural supplies.”
     “The items and supplies are inventoried and maintained in our warehouse facilities, where they are ready to be quickly loaded aboard aircraft and transported to disaster and recovery sites as required.”
     “Mercy Airlift has one of the lowest ratios of capital used for administrative services and fund raising in the humanitarian community.”
     “Through the generous support of our partners from around the world, Mercy Airlift is able to provide its life saving, disaster relief flights. No amount of support or any size donation is too small ... every dollar donated saves lives." www.mercyairlift.org. e-mail: info@mercyairlift.org. Cell:562-208-2912.
     Elsewhere the American Red Cross is currently focusing its efforts on Malawi, one of the most severely affected African countries, by providing food to 125,000 of the most vulnerable in five hard-to-reach, remote districts while implementing HIV/AIDS programs in prevention, home-based care and support to orphans
     Red Cross contact: 1-800-HELP NOW or 1-800-257-7575 (Spanish). Donations can also be mailed to your local Red Cross chapter or to the American Red Cross, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, DC 20013.
     So maybe an antidote right now for some of us feeling sorry for ourselves and our limping economies and companies, is to look around at the rest of the world with an eye toward easing other people’s burden.
     That’s what Andy Pike, who was born and raised to move air cargo, does every day.