12 Vol. 9 / No. 12/ December/January 2017/18 Global Aviator
Australia Helicopter Industry
It is -29 C, the wind is hauling
and the chill factor is at least
-40 C. Snow and ice covers
the airfield. It’s 14h00. It is
dark. This is Kittla in the north
of Finland, 67.65 degrees
North. Our pressurised Piper
Navajo has been standing
outside for a solid three
days and nights. How the
hell will we get it started?It’s December 1983 and according to
the Met Office the sun comes up at 11:
and sets at 12:43. So we will enjoy 1.
hours of daylight. The rest of the day is
wrapped in an eerie bluish light which
gives everything a strange appearance.How did we end up here?
This trip was organized by one of our
larger clients. His company buys a lotof paper in Finland and he wanted
to visit the Finnish supplier and see
one of their logging operations. As a
gesture to a few of his clients he invited
them to go along and have a trip of
a lifetime. Prerequisite was that only
men would be on this trip, no women
to distract or having difficulty to
participate in the highlights of this trip:
drinking and telling jokes and stories.
First we would fly from Rotterdam
to Helsinki, 824 Nm and after a few
days continue to Kittla, another 511Nm.
Instead of having the usual coffee and
tea offerings on board, we made sure
that sufficient beer was stocked. On that
winter morning we all met at Rotterdam
Airport around 09.00 am, where our
stallion for this trip, the pressurised
Piper Navajo was waiting, filled to
the brim with fuel. One of the main
attractions was obviously the unique
situation in Finland where for about 6
months each year, the sun would hardly
ascend above the horizon. Anotherattraction was the night life in Helsinki.
The flight had hardly left Dutch
airspace and the banter and high energy
level in the cabin was noticeable. My
co-pilot and I participated in all of this
whilst we kept one ear free to listen to
Air Traffic Control. The more north we
went, the less chatter on the airways.
Over Denmark the ATC traffic increased
for a moment, but flying over the
south of Sweden and the Baltic Sea we
heard nothing, except the continuous
laughter coming from the cabin.
To our East was Kaliningrad,
laying between Poland and Lithuania,
but it was territory belonging to the
Soviet Union. The large Navy harbour
was therefore the most westerly
reach of the USSR. In 1991 the USSR
fell apart and is now called Russia.
One entered a different geographical
and political area, so to speak. Large
parts of the Baltic Sea were frozen
and you could see icebreakers below,
followed by a number of cargo ships.By: Peter Kerckhoffs