BAGHDAD — After three weeks of R&R, I recently returned to
Iraq. Needless to say, flying back to Baghdad is always an iffy
proposition. One can do it “in style” with 19 other passengers
aboard The Flying
Carpet piloted by the legendary Captain Sammy Ayad. This gives
the whole process a bit of a Baron von Richthofen aura, and makes
one feel as if present at the dawn of aviation. But the problem is
that Sammy makes the round trip journey from Beirut to Baghdad only
twice a week, and he wasn’t in business the day I was
returning.
The alternative to flying The Rug is to take a practically
unmarked white Royal Jordanian Airlines Fokker 28 jet. The
airline’s identity is painted in pale gold on the white background,
as if using any more contrast would run the danger of making the
company’s name legible. This plane flies from Amman to Baghdad
daily, carrying about 50 passengers and a crew of South African
ex-pats at the controls.
When the bus carrying the passengers arrived at the foot of the
stairs, I looked up and noticed that the Fokker 28 has oval
windows. I have never trusted planes with oval windows. Those of us
old enough to remember such aviation arcana, will recall that the
Vickers Viscounts flown by Capital Airlines in the late 1950s and
early 1960s had oval windows. For quite a while these turboprop
planes were hailed as the cutting edge of aviation. Then one day
they mysteriously started dropping out of the sky in alarming
numbers onto the Maryland countryside; seems there was a problem
with metal fatigue around the edges of the oval windows. I have
usually avoided flying oval-windowed aircraft, but in the case of
getting to Baghdad you fly what is available.
Every flight into Baghdad is exciting simply because there are
guys down below with shoulder-fired missiles who would love nothing
better than to cut several dozen notches in their belts by shooting
one of these passenger jets out of the sky. Most of my fellow
passengers seem to be guys such as myself: Americans motivated by a
thousand different reasons — some noble, some not — to help Iraq
rebuild itself. The rebuilding itself is taking place at the same
time as a bunch of despicable madmen try to abort the process by
carrying in their favorite past time of engaging in suicide attacks
and detonating car bombs.
In spite of the many possible bad outcomes, none of the
passengers appears anxious or nervous. Most are veterans of these
flights and are used to the Baghdad landing approach, which
resembles that of a dive-bomber flying in a very tight,
left-turning corkscrew. Having gone through this before myself,
I’ve noticed that the only part of the twisting descent that makes
me nervous is wondering if the pilot will get his left wing back
into a horizontal position in time to avoid its hitting the runway
an instant before touchdown. I have this vision of a Fokker slicing
its left wing into the ground and cart-wheeling the rest of the way
to the terminal.
THE FLIGHT FROM AMMAN to Baghdad takes a bit over an hour.
Fortunately, on this flight I have a window seat and can look down
30,000 feet to the incredibly barren, ugly and forbidding
countryside of Western Iraq. There is no visible sign of life on
the ground, although the U.S. Marines who, for weeks, have been
locked in combat with the terrorists out here, would loudly argue
that their presence is very visible indeed.
Once RJA Flight 404 is directly over Baghdad International, it’s
time for Captain Tienhoven to show why he may have piloted a Stuka
dive bomber in an earlier life. We go into corkscrew mode and very,
very rapidly descend in a combination of a tight left hand turn and
free-fall. In no time at all we drop from 30,000 feet and pull out
at what seems to be barely 100 feet off the ground. The left wing
straightens out and we make a very soft landing. On any other
flight the pilot would have received a standing ovation from
grateful passengers for his feat of airmanship. On RJA 404 his
skill is greeted with a collective yawn.
When the cabin door is opened there is a blast of heat from the
outside air, which is at 133 degrees. We make our way down the
gangway and the heat is painful. I don’t know how the Ghurka
security guards who spend the entire day on these runways don’t
just collapse in a heap and die!
Once we’re inside the terminal, I notice the air-conditioning is
still purring along at about the same 60% level of effectiveness it
was on the outward-bound trip. We get into various lines for
immigration requirements and I find that once again my DoD badge
moved me to the head of the line. I am mystified by the power of my
little badge to earn me this entitlement. In the whole scheme of
things, there is not a bit of urgency to my entering Iraq even if
the process threatens to take a whole week. I don’t object,
however, when I’m directed to a new window that has been opened
just for me.
In Customs, one of the inspectors instructs me to open my large
suitcase, which is locked with a padlock whose combination I can
never remember. It’s either my birthday or the number of the
building in which I worked for many years on Fifth Avenue. I
invariably guess wrong, as I do this time. When I finally get
everything unraveled and my bag is open, the inspector comes over
but never looks inside. He closes the top, smiles, and makes an
obscene gesture with a finger. He seems very pleased to have having
inconvenienced one American.
When I get out to the passenger pick up area I am pleased myself
to notice the crowds are still pretty big and things are busy, just
as they were three weeks ago when I came through. As I walk toward
the car picking me up, I notice that, sitting on the sidewalk right
outside BIAP, are some 15 or 20 enormous packages wrapped in very
heavy duty plastic. It doesn’t take long to realize from the shape
of the packages that they contain the frames for the airport
escalators that will connect the two active floors of this 50-gate
airport.
I’m delighted to see this further evidence of a country in
mid-turnaround. It seems a sign of good things to come when they
are about to install escalators at the airport.
