Humpin' Yeminis!

Today was something new.

We've been flying pretty much non-stop to either Iraq or Afghanistan for the last three months. We did get the flight down to Djibouti, which was a nice change of pace, but it was a place I'd already been a couple times. Several crews have been flying over to Egypt and Yemen over and over again, and while none of these places are anything special, they are new and different places to say you've been. It's also good training for the young guys to experience flying in different countries, dealing with foreign controllers, and complying with different procedures.

Today's mission came down for yet another trip to Iraq, but at almost the same take off time, another crew was tagged to fly to Yemen for the second or third time in a row. None of us had been to Yemen before, and we had been talking about wanting to go there on a recent flight. When the preliminary schedule came out, I e-mailed the scheduler, suggesting that if no one objected, our crew would really like to go down to Yemen. Surprisingly, no one on the staff or the other crew minded, and when the final schedule came out, we were headed south!

The trip down was a bit eventful at the start, as we encountered icing just as we crossed into Saudi Arabia. The anti-icing was working overtime and you could actually watch the ice build on the windshield wipers and propeller blades. It took a decent of a couple thousand feet to catch up with the icing, and we were able to fly out of it after fifty or sixty miles.

The capital of Yemen is Sana'a, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. At an altitude of 7,500 feet, it is also one of the highest capital cities in the world. It sits on a high arid plain surrounded by mountains on three sides, and presents some performance challenges with the altitude and high temperatures. It has a population of over 1.7 million, making it the largest city in the country.

Our mission was to drop off pallets of ammunition to aid in the training of the Yemeni police force. Each pallet probably weighed 2,500 -3,000 lbs, so there was a lot of weight back there. When we taxied in, we were met by the US Station Agent, the airport operations personnel, some US Army guys in mufti, and a bunch of Yemeni officers and troops. Lots of smiles, greetings and handshakes all around.

Everything went pretty smooth until it was discovered that no one had paid for a forklift to unload the pallets. The Army (the user) wouldn't spring for it, and the Embassy wasn't going to pay for it. What they really wanted was for us, the Air Force to pick up the tab. Unfortunately we had a set of orders with what the planners had authorized payment for, and a forklift was NOT on the list. I don't think it was all that much, but if we had signed for it unauthorized, it is just like our finance folks to say it was the crew's bill. Not something we were willing to kick in for, not on $3.50 a day.

So, we went back and forth on this for awhile, even considering using all the extra bodies to manually unload the cargo. In fact it began to look like a PENDOT project with all the folks standing around trying to figure out how this was going to work. The last thing we wanted to do was haul the cargo back to Qatar.

Finally, our loadmasters, old hands that they are, figured it out and the mission proceeded. The first pallet was artfully offloaded, and situated at the base of the tail ramp. The Yemenis quickly hooked it up to a little Toyota pick-up by some chains, and attempted to drag it across the tarmac. The Toyota spun it's wheels, got some traction, moved it a few dozen feet then stalled, gathered itself and moved farther again... Finally the driver got the idea of not losing the momentum and he was able to move it, struggling and straining off the active ramp, wisps of smoke wafting from beneath the hood.

After that, the system got better; the pallet came off, chains were attached (the Toyota was replaced by a stake-bed truck), and the pallet drug off. In no time all six pallets were downloaded and hauled away.

The only thing left was to pay our fees. This was a bit of concern. None of us were really up on conversion factors and what really cost what. The Co-pilot (in possession of a LOT of money) had the fun task of fiscal negotiations (including paying for the airport fees and the fuel), and went off with the airport folks and the US station agent. They were gone for quite some time, and we were beginning to wonder if he got mugged or something, but by the time we were done refueling, he returned and even had a few Yemeni Rials left in his satchel. Only a cash count by the finance folks back home would truly tell if he had got it right....

As a final show of friendship, we posed for a picture with our new found friends, the Yemeni troops who had helped in the unloading. We gathered on the ramp, smiled for several cameras and exchanged farewells. It had been a good afternoon in a new and interesting location. Hopefully there will be many more like this in the future.