Weather or not. Or not.

Asking God's blessing and and presence for the day's flights.

4:00 a.m. the strains from the Andante movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 start playing softly on my phone. The peaceful piece barely gets through the first few measures before I’ve shut it off and have rolled out of bed to start my morning pilot routine: get my uniform on, put sunscreen on my face, shave—? Nah, got this itchy “beard” going and I’ll try to keep it a bit longer. I read from my Bible as I eat my hot meal for the day. Then, grabbing my lunch box and flight bag, I step out the door to walk the dark path to the hangar.

Light is spilling out of the side door and I know the loading crew is already busy getting the barang (cargo) strapped down inside the cabin. I slip in with a subdued “Selamat pagi” (good morning) and begin my own preparations, helping Gary with checking fuel and making sure we have miscellaneous supplies with us. Someone starts to roll open the large hangar doors and now I can see the nearby hills in the early morning light. The passengers are ushered from the waiting area into the hangar and we all pause to have a short devotional. After a heartfelt prayer, it’s time to push the plane out and get ready to fire up.

5:45 engine start. Well, that was the plan, but it’s actually closer to 6:00 right now. We’ve managed to keep our departure slot open so we taxi to the end of the runway, get takeoff clearance from Sentani Tower and then roar into the brightening sky. An hour of cruising follows, during which the undulating hills surrounding Sentani gradually smooth out to flat, featureless jungle and then finally the towering mountain range that divides the island into top and bottom.

The typical daily schedule is a flight from Doyo Baru to a mountain airstrip where we drop off people and goods at their desired destination after which we continue to a larger airport in Dekai on the other side of the range. Using Dekai as a base for the day we make numerous small hops into the mountains, refueling and loading up with cargo in Dekai and then bringing back passengers from the mountain villages who want to go to town. By 3:00 or so in the afternoon the weather is usually closing down the runways and so it’s off for one last stop between Dekai and home where we drop goods and passengers and pick up folks who want to get to Sentani.

America? Piece of cake. Papua? More like papeda...

Today our first stop on the way to Dekai is the mountain village of Bakasa on the north side of the range. The passengers are quietly looking out the windows and enjoying the view and Gary is getting ready to have breakfast while I serve as an autopilot. The air is glassy smooth, as it often is in the early morning. But the early hour brings a problem that might mess up the plans. Rains from last night have left a lingering cloud layer that is hugging the terrain up ahead. The undercast to appears to stretch all the way to the mountains and it’s possible that Bakasa is beneath it and will be socked in for another few hours. There’s no definite way to tell from where we’re at right now. With no one in the village listening to the radio at this hour and nothing like METARs and AWOS systems in these remote villages, it’s just a matter of “Let’s take a look and see.”

Sure enough, an hour into the flight we arrive over top of where the village is supposed to be and there’s nothing but moist gray stratus clouds and the occasional tempting “sucker hole”—a gap in the clouds that’s big enough to afford a view, but small enough to quickly trap a plane trying to descend through. Gary makes the decision to land at the nearest village that is open. Turning back to the passengers, he yells over the whine of the engine, “Cuaca tutup - kita turun di Puldamat” (the weather is closed - we’ll land at Puldamat).

A few moments later we’re on the ground unloading our somewhat subdued, but cooperative, passengers and their luggage. We’ll come back to get them at the end of the day our way back home when the low clouds will have burned off. I’m amazed at how the folks here take unanticipated delays in stride. Don’t try this back in America!

We leave our passengers and climb back in the plane to continue on to Dekai. Thundering down the wet grass runway, the Porter fairly leaps into the air with just Gary and me in it. Half an hour later we’ve over the mountains and descending toward the long, paved runway in Dekai. We touch down and taxi up to where our crew is waiting with a pile of cargo. This first flight will be to Langda. A customer has paid for a load of roofing material to be hauled there. After our ground crew carefully loads the stuff into the plane, we take off for the 20 minute flight. Approaching the area, it’s clear that weather is going to continue to be a nemesis today. The valley surrounding the strip is swirling with white fluffy clouds and we can’t even see the runway yet. Gary maneuvers the plane to find a hole on the far end. This runway is built on a plateau and is one of the few that can be approached from either side. He spots the strip and makes the approach, but it’s clear that once we get on the ground time is not going to be on our side.

No more Windows Vista here.

“How quickly can you unload a plane of zinc roofing?” he laughs wryly. This stuff is the worst to unload, as it’s very sharp and great care must be taken to avoid damaging yourself or the plane in the process. A moment later, we’re on the ground, the engine is shut off and I’m scrambling to open the sliding door on my side of the plane and start undoing the straps. With the help of the village residents, we manage to get the material offloaded as quickly as possible, but it’s a losing battle. There’s still a small window at the end of the runway but right as Gary gets the engine going again for an immediate departure, the view vanishes and we’re enveloped in a drizzly grey mist. There’s nothing to do but wait and see if we’ll be able to get out today. Apparently Gary’s dad spent 3 days in this particular village waiting for the weather to clear!

Gary opens his door and starts chatting with the radio operator from the village while I lean against the door frame and close my eyes to try and take a power nap. A half hour later I hear Gary saying goodbye and shutting his door. “Looks like we can give it a shot.” There’s just enough visibility and we make a dash for it, breaking out into the clear shortly after departing. First and last flight for Langda for today!

We had a repeat 2 days later. This time we waited 1 1/2 hour.

Gary radios ahead to our crew at Dekai to prep the next load for Koropun. We make a couple runs over the next hour and a half. It’s fast-paced work: land at Dekai, check fuel status and maybe add half a drum, load cargo and possibly a passenger or two, start the engine and take off for a 15 minute flight to the mountain strip, chuck the stuff out of the plane as soon as the propeller has stopped turning, grab the sliding seats from the tail section and reconfigure the cabin for a full load of people, help the passengers put on their seatbelts, and then zoom down the sloped runway and into the valley beyond to make the short hop back to Dekai. And repeat.

Some days we’ll make up to five of these round trips, but today the clouds are closing the valleys in quickly and there’s not much more we can do without the real risk of getting stuck for the night. Gary has me fuel up for the return trip across the mountains. We have a load for Puldamat which works out nicely as that’s where our stranded passengers are waiting for us. With the increasingly threatening backdrop of dark clouds over mountains, we say goodbye to the Dekai Info radio operator and point the nose toward the pass where we’ll cross the highest terrain.

Things are not looking promising as we cross the crest. In fact it looks almost worse than this morning. There’s no way we’re going to find Bakasa in the clag and it’s looking like Gary’s going to have to work to find a way into Puldamat. He circles here and there looking for openings in the clouds. Finally finding enough clear air that affords a way to climb back up again if necessary he descends and is able to navigate up the valley to Bakasa. The runway is just visible beneath the murky overcast. “Well, let’s see how fast you can unload again,” he says as he lowers the flaps and commits for landing.

Rice is the easiest thing to unload. Just dump it out the door.

Our passengers are waiting for us, but Gary has to quickly explain that there’s no way to get them to Bakasa today. They’ll have to overnight here until we’re able to get back for another try the day after tomorrow. He finishes explaining this to them and then turns back to help me get the last of the rice and instant noodles out of the cabin. “Feel that downslope breeze—you know what that means?” he asks as he tosses the sacks out the door. I shake my head. “We’re about to get smashed,” he says, pointing at the mist that is creeping down the hillside above us. Great.

Everything’s out now and with no one needing to buy a ride to Sentani, we quickly slide the doors shut on the empty cabin and scramble to get buckled in and get the engine started. The departure path is still clear. We make it out.

A couple days later the weather is much more cooperative and we’re able to deliver our passengers and their goods to Bakasa. In theory they could have hiked, although they had a bit too much stuff to do that efficiently. It would have been a 2 day walk. The flight time? 6 1/2 minutes. Yup, that’s why we’re here.

7 nautical mile distance, as the crow flies. (Garmin Pilot)