I diverted from a southerly course to avoid entering the massive storm clouds. Thunderheads, powered by the heat of the desert, created dangerous updraughts capable of tearing the wings off the plane. Since I didn’t have permission to fly over Saudi Arabian airspace and Sudan was also out of bounds, I had little room to manoeuvre between the thunderstorms that spread over the Red Sea before reaching the latitude of Port Sudan.
By five-thirty the setting sun had thrown a shadow over my port wing. The faint tinge of the instrument lights marked the end of day. The cockpit gradually evolved into the warm glow of numbers and gauges as I plunged deeper into the night. The GPS indicated four more flying hours to Djibouti. I had not communicated on the radio for nine hours. My body ached with stiffness from the lack of movement. I needed to rest.
Two hours later I detected small pinpricks of light on the horizon from the Eritrean coast north of Djibouti. The contour map indicated a coast that was ringed with steep mountains; I needed to gain altitude immediately.
The coastal mountains of Eritrea, majestic and rugged, rise dramatically from the sea to form the eastern wall of the Great Rift Valley. This valley is part of an enormous geological fault that extends from the island of Madagascar through East Africa and Ethiopia to the Red Sea; the spine of Africa, massive in scope and beauty.
Moist warm air from the Red Sea pushes up the sides of these Eritrean mountains, cooling the moisture into thick cumulus cloud, which produces turbulence and potential for icing. Soon the plane’s running lights reflected a halo of light off the first bank of cloud, which obscured all visibility. I climbed higher, well above thirteen thousand feet, to safely cross the mountain range north of Djibouti. The plane laboured under the constant buffeting of air currents and thick cloud. Sharp, short jolts jerked the plane’s control cables, which alternated from slack to tense with a snap. Flying became more and more challenging.
Suddenly, the engine faltered. Its familiar, constant vibration and tonal pitch stuttered, threatening to stop altogether. For an instant I was transfixed, paralyzed, in total disbelief. Every nerve jangled, every muscle tensed, as I focused on this life-threatening and unexpected development. I pulled on the carburetor-icing knob. The engine continued to stumble, dangerously close to a stall. There had been no icing all day, so instinctively I dismissed icing as the cause of the problem. The engine coughed again, caught once more in a valiant attempt, and then fell silent—leaving only the sound of rushing wind through the airframe. It was startling the way the silence broke in.
I quickly set the controls into a glide, watching the altimeter unwind at a rate of eight hundred feet per minute. I could scarcely believe it. This was no practice drill, no routine exercise. Alone, no communication, no visibility, dropping into an unfamiliar, uninhabited mountain range at night. This was a flying nightmare—as bad as it gets.
My mind raced over the available options and there were precious few. Crashing into a remote set of mountains in the dark with no visibility meant the chances of survival were negligible. I was struck by a sudden overwhelming sense of weariness that dulled the threat of impending disaster. A sense of resignation took hold, the end was unavoidable. I was so close to completing the trip. All the effort, the calculation of risk, the preparation, the hours of flying—to have it end like this was so utterly futile. I thought of Krystyne. How would she ever know what had happened? A wave of regret washed over me at the unfairness of it all. Was this really taking place?
I forced myself to get a grip, to concentrate, to do everything possible until the last second before the plane slammed into the mountainside. There are prescribed procedures for engine failures, starting with a review of instruments and gauges, one by one, starting left to right. I methodically went through the routines, conscious of the pressure of depleting time and altitude.
The port fuel tank gauge read empty. The fuel selector valve pointed to the left tank . . . “God Almighty, I forgot to switch over to the starboard fuel tank. I’ve run out of fuel. How could that have happened?” Switching to the full fuel tank, I reset the mixture to restart the engine. The Cessna Continental O47J engine is susceptible to flooding when hot; it needs careful coaxing. “Please God, let it start.” Fully anticipating a flash of mountainside to suddenly fill the windscreen as the plane continued its downward plunge into darkness, I reached for the ignition.
The engine restarted. I eased the stick back in an effort to regain the thirty-five hundred feet I had lost over the previous four minutes. I was below the highest mountain peaks, in danger of flying blindly at full power into the side of one of several mountains that towered nine thousand feet into the night. I set the controls to maximum power and pitch for the steepest climb speed, waiting with bated breath during the three minutes of climb it took to reach eleven thousand feet and safe clearance. It was long enough to dwell on my oversight, a sure sign of fatigue. I badly needed to reach Djibouti, to get my feet on the ground.
An hour later, I started the descent into Djibouti through a corridor of mountains. Minimum navigational aids into Djibouti made the approach tricky, one any pilot would prefer to make in daylight. With a renewed sense of concentration I entered into the instrument approach, passed the directional beacon outbound, and a minute later circled into a teardrop turn, back across the beacon inbound on the final descent, breaking through cloud three hundred feet above the runway lights that shone like a diamond bracelet directly before me.
Safe on the ground at last, I shambled across the tarmac, glanced back at my plane, sitting with its nose in the air, and reflected on what could have been our last flight. We had flown so many hours together, she and I, as faithful companions. How could I have endangered us in such a slipshod way? I turned away, documents in hand, and headed over to the airport tower encircled by barbed wire.
The whole airport at Djibouti was abandoned save for a lone controller, locked in the airport tower along with his Second World War instruments and a small sleeping cot. It was ten-thirty at night, and there were no officials, no taxis, and nowhere to go. Resigned to spending the night on an airport bench, bitten by mosquitoes, I was nevertheless grateful to be alive. Neon lights hanging from the ceiling cast a greenish, funereal glow over the vast hall as they buzzed and flickered. A driving thirst had me drinking tap water that smelled and tasted polluted. I had completed thirteen and a half hours of difficult flying, only to end up sleeping on an airport bench. Still, I was safe, and my final destination, Nairobi, was now only one more long-distance flight away.
An hour later, a car drove up to the airport. After protracted negotiations, I was able to convince its driver to take me into town to the Hotel du Ciel. Too tired to find food, I fell into bed reflecting on my good fortune to be alive in Djibouti, Africa.
Djibouti is an unlikely country. Tucked within the folds of overlapping mountain ranges it guards the western portal of the strait, Bab Al Mandeb (Gate of Tears), the narrow entrance at the southern end of the Red Sea, which sits at the base of the Horn of Africa. Only thirty-five miles separate this part of Africa from Arabia and both sides are visible on a clear day.
Djibouti is really a city state, a border town between North and sub-Saharan Africa, where Islam and the Christian Coptic religions meet. The Jewish community has virtually disappeared. North African Arabs rub shoulders with black Africans, exchanging goods and services in Arabic, French, and Swahili. The restaurants, mostly empty, still produce good food, influenced by the French. Ethiopian girls in brightly coloured skirts have a saucy look in their eyes, fully prepared to meet you later in a bar. Prostitution is rife, but the lack of paying customers a problem. The occasional out-of-place European youth wanders lost and dirty along the broken sidewalks of the main street. Djibouti, it seems, is a cosmopolitan dumping ground of human misery.
Historically, the city has been one of the principal gateways into Africa. Arab dhows loaded with merchandise arrive with the monsoon, seeking trade. Times are tough and trading thin. Nevertheless, enormous quantities of cheap goods from as far as China pass from trader to trader