My mate John has a Cirrus SR22 which is coming up to being 10 years old. He has planned it's 10 year anniversary trip touring around Australia. He would fly it down to the Australia and then another member of our Singapore based flying club, Alex, would fly it back to Singapore via some other interesting Australian sites. When John mentioned the first stage of the trip was to the Gold Coast, my very own Australian Kampong, I immediately volunteered to come along for the ride.
John is an experienced hand, having originally flown this Cirrus from the US factory to Singapore when it was new 10 years ago. He has also done many cross continental trips in his TBMs including a full circumnavigation of the earth! It has always been my intention to do cross continent flying one day, so what better way then to learn from a master.
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| This is John telling me to hurry up |
We set out from Seletar, the General Aviation hub in Singapore, on Monday the 24th April. The smooth handling of the Wings Over Asia (WOA) folks made the departure from Singapore swift and effortless. We rocked up to the terminal at 6:30am, did a quick customs, immigration and quarantine (CIQ) clearance, then a short drive in the WOA minivan to the aircraft. Our 4 days of flying consists of 7 legs, each about 500-600nm (approximately 1000-1200km). The Cirrus is capable of up to 1000nm in one flight, but that means you're in the air for about 7 hours, which means less fuel when you near your destination, which gives you less time if you have weather or traffic, and no toilet breaks. So the usual strategy is to break it up into 500nm-600nm legs.
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| Our planned flight route to Australia |
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The first flight today is Seletar (WSSL) to Halim (WIHH), just slightly over 500nm. We departed at 7am, behind a Canadian registered Pilatus (he's a long was from home), on runway 21, into a very hazy, humid morning Singapore sky.
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Canadian Pilatus departing WSSL
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Sunrise in the haze just before departing WSSL
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The instrument departure has us initially fly out over the southern tip of Malaysia, then right turn back directly overhead Singapore's Changi International airport. We initially fly SSE over Bintan Island and then turn directly South on the W24 airway, cruising at 150 kts, at 9000 ft. The morning sun beams low across the sky, limiting visibility. We are flying on an IFR flight plan, so no drama, and guided by our GPS nav systems and the calm voice of the Singapore controllers. We are comforted by the fact we have the full aircraft parachute recovery system and a life raft, life jackets, survival kit and iridium sat phone on the back seat.
We are now about to cross the equator, then fly over the Southern capital of Sumatra, Palembang. The massive rivers in Southern Sumatra are busy thoroughfares, busy with barges towing coal and timber. Road highways in this part of Indonesia don't exist.
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About 3 hours and 45 minutes later we are landing at Halim, which is Jakarta's General Aviation airport. If you've flown into Jakarta before, then you'll be familiar with the site of haze and low visibility. We are less than 3 miles final before we can see the runway.
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| Typical visibility landing in Jakarta |
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Its a busy little airport with corporate jets, some commercial A320's and a variety of military aircraft. We land with an Indonesian Air Force Hercules C130 patiently waiting at the takeoff holding point. We taxi over to be greeted by a full complement of 6 handlers, and get waved onto the ramp by a fellow holding two ping pong bats. We're greeted with welcoming smiles by the people from IndoAsia. John had hired IndoAsia to do all the handing, permits and various paperwork and fees required to fly through Indonesia. Its a lot of bureaucracy for such a small plane and two crew.
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IndoAsia welcoming committee at Halim
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They brought over the 44 gallon drum of Avgas (44 imperial gallons is equivalent to 52 US gallons which is equivalent to 200 litres) on the back of their pickup truck. The small army of helpers backed up the truck, popped open the pristine sealed drum and inserted the hand pump into the drum and the hose into the aircraft's left wing to top us off. It probably took less than 20 minutes to hand pump the fuel into our two wings tanks.
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Refueling 44 Gallon Drum Style
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After refuel we had time to go to the IndoAsia office, grab a kopi-o and a toilet break. Back to the aircraft with passports already processed and waiting for us in the aircraft. We were on the ground for less than an hour, very good for this part of the world. Now onto leg 2, destination Lombok.
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John taxiing for takeoff at Halim
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We climbed out behind another C130, and tracked over Java Island to the North of Bandung on airway W45, joining the coast line for a while, then tracking parallel to the Northern Java Coast to Surabaya, then parallel the coast all the way to off the Northern tip of Bali. I was jet lagged since I had arrived from the US at midnight the night before, so took the opportunity to take a snooze and dreamed of the life of a ferry pilot.
The scenery flying through Indonesia is quite spectacular. We passed several impressive volcanoes with craters higher than 10,000 ft.
One of the reasons we avoided landing in Bali is its now so busy, you have to reserve a slot time. As we listened in on the Bali approach controller, he had airliners stacked up 10 deep for landing. So our 2nd leg was slightly longer in distance, 600nm, and an unfavorable
head wind made this a fairly long flight. Total time from engine start
to shutdown was almost 4 hours 45 minutes.
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Once again we were greeted by the friending smiling folks from IndoAsia to help us refuel and transport to the hotel. They were waiting for at at the ramp with the fuel, and we topped off the tanks ready for the morning departure.
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Lombok Refueling
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Lombok Ground Crew
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There were a few airliners departing for the last flights of the day. Once the last Air Asia and Lion Air aircraft departed we were the only aircraft down the Eastern end of the ramp. At the other end were 3 Cessna 172's and 1 Liberty X2, parked in front of an abandoned, wheel-less old 737 from Batavia Air, an Indonesian Airline that went bankrupt a few years back.
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| Lombok Ramp |
Since this was a purely domestic leg, there we no CIQ formalities, so a quick drive straight from the plane to the hotel had us checking in at the D'Max convention hotel in 10 minutes. This was not the Four Seasons, but its close proximity to the airport, and nice clean rooms with large beds made for a comfortable stay. For those folks planning a proper holiday to Lombok, obviously the place to head would be to the beach resorts. The area around the airport is quite rural, looks a bit like Langkawi which the padi fields and Lembu. We decided to be adventurous and take the 10 minute cab ride into Praya, the closest town for dinner. The Chicken Satay and Nasi Goreng were edible, but let's just leave it at that. The hotel bar Bintang Beer did the job of washing it down and we retired early for the early start on day 2.
For all the action from day 2, click
here.
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