Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Singapore - another milestone




Weather forecast for Singapore

After having to pay our fine of $440 to Customs we received our passports and we were allowed to leave the building for departure. We were also told not to open aircraft doors, only in the presence of customs. 

At Execujet, before departure

We went out to the aircraft and there was a bit of confusion regarding the permission to open our doors... a huge sticker over the hinge side of the door and a huge sticker was pasted over the opening part of the door. And it looks as if someone tried to pull the sticker off again after it was placed.
Some of the corners were torn off. We also tried to peel the stickers off before we attempted to open doors... no luck, they were stuck.

Damage to Aircraft by Customs Officials

One crew after another just openend doors, everyone was angry... tearing the labels apart, even Hans Rudolf who we know as a very quiet and reasonable man was shouting and even swearing at the officials who, fortunately, were too far away to hear.

Cellier offered to investigate why we had to pay such a hefty amount despite the airport being an International Airport and Customs usually never gets informed regarding incoming aircraft, they are on duty anyway, 24/7.


Leaving Bali, Wednesday, 16.10.2013, 10h15 local time, we are eventually departing for Singapore

Airborne above Bali

Now that we are on our way, Dietmar and me, we talk about the incident. We think whoever did this was very angry and instead of placing one sticker, which would have been quite sufficient, placing two stickers on the doors and than tried to pull one off with no success. Or... the handling agent, trying to set matters right, tried to remove the stickers. Assuming that, and seeing HIS action, he would know for sure the customs representative was wrong.

Now we speak to the others over company frequency, some are already too far away, some answer back to us with info that each and every door had 2 stickers attached. In the case of the one PC12, with fancy Da Vinci Art work on the aircraft, there may be more severe damage caused by the stickers.

In our case the sticker was partly placed over MY FAMILY, and I take that personal.

Dietmar and Johannes are angry, they want to take this matter further, if necessary with a report to ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation). 

In 12 Minutes we will cross the equator from South to North. Pics attached. Unfortunately the one with S 00 is not clear. Therefore one BEFORE and one AFTER.


South of Equator

North of Equator

Our ETA for Singapore is now in 54 minutes. The winds are good and we had a ground speed of 177 kn most of the time. Singapore airports (and there are many within a small area) are busy and it is interesting for pilots, mainly because of surrounding high rise buildings. Also on our stormscope we can see thunderstorms, 100 nm in front of us, in actual fact, at destination point. We request descend and circumnavigate various cloud build-ups.

View from Cockpit

Thunderstorms are building up around us

After landing, we were handled by "Wings over Asia" who made every effort to satisfy our requirements. 

Internet access in the courtesy car ?


... you bet!






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