Day Four in Haiti/Dominican Republic. First a shot of the El Higuero Airport out of which we are operating.
A full modern tower, a nice terminal building, and a very large GA hangar section.
Contrast that to the airport we are flying into in Haiti—the Jacmel Airport. The half completed new terminal looks like this:
The Canadian military have basically taken the building over, and are currently in charge of operating the airport. On the far right corner are the officers who manage the traffic. Their setup is basically a fold-up table with laptops and a radio, with an antenna fixed to the roof. It doesn't look like much, but they are the best air traffic controllers we encountered the whole trip.
The new terminal doesn't look like much, until you compare it to the old terminal which looks like:
A lot of guys hanging out, waiting for work.... Interestingly, someone had the bright idea to point the airport runway right at some mountains. When the wind is out of the south, this makes for an interesting approach.
The runway itself is not bad for an GA airport. There is a slight bump at one end, which could be a bit squirrelly on takeoff if you aren't careful. And if you look closely, you can see the King Air off to the side. No taxiway, so a lot of back taxiing on the runway.
Today, we our first mission is to fly the two aid workers who got stranded yesterday, along with the rest of their bags. Plus, we have a new team of doctors arriving from Kansas City. We are told 8 doctors/nurses with nearly 2,000 lbs of stuff. More aircraft are en route to help us out today, so we should be able to get all this done. Jochen takes the two remaining passengers from yesterday's flights, and I bring along an orthopedic surgeon and a bunch of luggage. By this time, the flights are starting to become routine. We have figured out the procedures (even the maddening farce that is the Gen Decs), we have figured out the routes to fly, and how the weather is likely to change as the day goes on. So my first flight out and back goes off with out much incident.
Today, the "Customs and Immigration" woman at Jacmel has been replaced with a much more casual looking gentleman. Who nevertheless has his clipboard of forms, and his request for the $22 landing fee. One of the passengers we are taking in this morning is a nurse originally from Haiti currently working in Florida. She apparently returns to Haiti once a year to do this sort of work. She launches into a heated negotiation in Creole with the official, and after a few minutes the official takes our tail numbers down, and we are told we no longer have to pay the landing fee. One problem solved.
I hurry to get the plane back to Santo Domingo. We had discovered the day before yesterday that the plane was due for an oil change. After a flurry of emails with our maintenance guys, we decide to have the oil change done in the DR. This should be interesting. I had been told that the mechanic leaves at noon, and arrive with just 20 minutes to spare. Jim (our host and local guide) has contacted his mechanic for me, and taxis the airplane to the maintenance hangars. This should take 45 minutes tops. But it ends up taking 2 hours. (To make matters more interesting, the only oil they have is 100 weight—just fine for a tropical climate like the DR, but useless when the plane returns to the northeast. We will have to have the oil changed once more when we get back. And it also makes the case of 15w-50 we are carrying completely redundant.
After the oil change is done, the next task is to track down some fuel. It took Jordan nearly two hours to get his plane refueled this afternoon—something that should take 15 minutes. I also have some trouble getting the fuel truck to come around. When one of us finally finds the fuel truck driver, he says that he cannot fuel us because he has run out of invoicing forms, and he has to go back to the office on the other side of the complex, to go get more. 10 minutes, right? Wrong. I finally get fueled when our host and local guide, Jim, climbs into the passenger seat of the fuel truck, and forces the fuel truck driver to drive to my plane to fuel us. Elapsed time: an hour and 15 minutes.
In the mean time, another intrepid pilot, Glenn, who heard our urgent request for help has flown in from Jamaica where he was vacationing. His plane is a Mooney—not much of a load hauler but will carry three passengers, and gives us much needed help in getting those 8 doctors into Jacmel. So while I wait for the oil change and refuel, I brief him on the route and procedure. We decide to depart as a flight of two, to ease him into the whole business of flying across the border.
Once in the air, I again report into Santo Domingo Info, and relay the required information. The controller speaks with a heavily accented English. Right behind me, I hear Glenn reporting in—he relays his departing airport, intended airport, etc. The controller asks in a heavy accent "nombre on bard...". Glenn is clearly confused: "say again"? Controller "nombre on bard...! Glenn: "..." Trying not to laugh, I break in on the air-to-air frequency that we are both monitoring: "He want's to know how many are on board." For the duration of the exchange, I get to "translate".
That done, Glenn is free to fly to Jacmel. In his fast Mooney, he has the clear advantage. He left 10 minutes after me, but arrives 15 minutes earlier. I arrive in Jacmel as Glenn is getting ready to depart. I also quickly unload my passenger and cargo, and prepare to depart as well. We are maybe 30 minutes to sunset—and the Canadians shut the airport down at dusk. In addition, VFR flight is technically prohibited after sundown in the Dominican Republic.
As I head out, I hear Jochen and Jordan in bound in their plane delivering the last of the passengers and baggage. They will barely make the turn around at Jacmel. I cross the boarder with about 15 minutes of daylight left. Santo Domingo Info takes my inbound information, and tells me to report in when I am 10 miles away from the airport. Fair enough. In the mean time, the clouds are starting to roll in again, being pushed up the mountains into a thick layer. I climb to avoid the cloud layer, and proceed on. I realize that I haven't filed an IFR flight plan (though I doubt I could have even if I had thought of it), and I do have to get down once over the airport. I have plenty of fuel, and I have at least three outs. I know from the previous day that even with clouds over the mountains, the area in the plains tend to clear up at night. Certainly the area over the oceans are clear. And if push comes to shove, I can call up Santo Domingo approach and request their assistance in getting an instrument approach into El Higuero.
I come within 15 miles of the airport, and the cloud layer is still pretty thick below. So, I decide to divert south in the direction of the ocean to try to find a hole to descend through. A few miles from the coast, the clouds start to disperse, and I find that hole. Duck down below the cloud layer with the cloud bases about 2,000 ft MSL, and head back in the direction of El Higuero. All in all, about a 20 mile detour. I get to 10 miles from the airport. I call Santo Domingo Info, as instructed. I get no reply. I try again, twice more. Still no reply. So, I just radio the control tower at El Higuero, and they clear me to approach and land. Once on the ground I call up the tower and ask if I need to do anything since I hadn't been able to report in, even though I was instructed to do so. Their response, "Don't worry about it. Those guys (SD Info) stop responding at sun down. There's probably no one there."
In the mean time, Jordan and Jochen land. They had crossed the border perhaps 15 minutes behind me, right at sun down. And SD Info simply directed them to communicate with SD Approach. (I guess the SD Info guys were getting ready to go home.) Their flight was treated as if on instrument flight plan. It would have been nice if they had remembered that they had one more plane in the air just 15 minutes ahead that might have benefited from similar treatment...
Another exhausting day. Especially because there are just so many logistical obstacles to getting things done.
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