Aviation Exploits

One of Liz's cousins - nicknamed "Babe" - is a 747 pilot for Philippine Airlines. A gracious host, he suggested that we rent a small plane and fly around Manila for awhile.

When we arrived at the little flight school the staff seemed nervous - Babe has impressive military and commercial credentials. He later mentioned that I had an FAA rating and then they all got worried that we were evaluating their operation!

Luckily, they relaxed a bit when Babe told them we were just there for a joyride.

Although he hadn't been in a small plane for over twenty years, he brought his daughter along to enjoy the experience. He and his daughter sat in the back while I was in front with an instructor from the flight school. We needed the instructor because neither Babe nor I was "current" in the Cessna 172. Babe did make a significant contribution to the flight though, pointing out some of the instructor's mistakes and giving some helpful instructions when we had a minor instrument failure in cloudy weather. (The VHF Omni-Range and Automatic Direction Finder went out and the airport was obscured, but fortunately it cleared up before we had to get manual vectors from approach control. Less important failures included a bad fuel guage and thermometer.)

So strictly speaking, the plane was not airworthy by US Standards. We wouldn't have gone up if we knew about those things in advance -- they said they had already completed the pre-flight before we got there so we didn't bother. In their favor though, they did give us a first-class briefing. We went over a custom packet with weather report, Warnings, satellite picture, flight plan, airport synopsis, and so on. Where I rent planes in the US, pilots would need to do that themselves. The normally don't bother for short sightseeing flights.

I was really hoping that Babe's daughter Dorothy could do some of the flying but Babe insisted that I sit in the left seat and do the work. It was great fun! For him, it must have been like another day in the office, and as it turns out two days later he left for a flight to Hong Kong. For me, I was doing all I could to keep the assigned altitude and heading in the windy air over Manila. At one point I was fifty feet too high -- hardly an infraction, but not perfect -- and he joked later that if I was his student he would have hit me in the head with the radio microphone. Overall, I was honored to be in his presence. Later on in the flight I asked the instructor to take over so I could enjoy the view and take some pictures.

We were in the air for a little over two hours.

Sadly, as soon as we landed he received a call regarding the crash of an Air Philippines 737, the worst aviation disaster in the country's history. He said the pilot was a close friend of his and was at the top of their class when they were in military flight school together. We were all saddened and Babe was visibly shaken. There were some tense moments at home when Liz's relatives thought our small little Cessna was the plane that crashed.

The ramp crew rolled out our plane and did the pre-flight -- a real luxury compared to U.S. Schools.

In the cockpit over Manila.

Dottie hides her apprehension while I am at the controls.

Downtown Makati, part of Metro Manila

The lovely Pasig River winds through Manila, dumping a load of trash into the bay.

Lava flows around Mount Pinatubo, which caused major destruction in its 1994 eruption.

Bataan, site of the infamous Japanese death march.

Back safely at Ninoy Aquino International Airport, shortly before receiving the bad news.