A pilot's tale

Matt exited his cockpit, a vast sea of paddy field greeted him and not far from where he is standing he saw what's seems to be a farmer. He gave it a thought and decided to approach the farmer to ask for directions. Slowly at first he ran and halfway through the 4 lanes highway he sprint toward the farmer who is still clearly stunned with the sight in front of him.

" Assalamualaikum tuan! Tumpang tanya. Saya ni kat mana ye ? ( peace be upon you dear good sir, may I know where I am? ) " Matt nervously ask the farmer With a crooked smile and his tobacco stained teeth shines gloriously under the golden evening sun the farmer replied " ... Sawadeekap ! "

That's when Matt realized he really is in deep shit...

It was a warm summer sunday afternoon in 1999 that I met my long lost buddy Matt enjoying his coffee alone at Canai and Such in Subang. Ring a bell? It's used to be one of the hippiest mamak joint in the last century but it's history now. After the usual meet and greet how's life? How's the girlfriend? How's the family yada yada yada bla bla bla then we came to the "so what are you doing now?" topic which invites a very uncomfortable smile from Matt. He told me he is doing trust fund recruitment for a very well known company. Then it struck me, what happened along the way? What happened to his career?

I gratuated from Malaysian Flying Academy in Batu Berendam Malacca in 1996 and Matt was 2 batch my junior. This Matt guy is quite a nice guy actually. The typical " lelaki melayu terakhir (not!) " he is in a way trustworthy, honest and kind.

Thing about life is, you can plan all you want but life always pull some surprise on you, sometimes HUGE ones.

As for Matt he managed only half of the qualification to earn him the licence to fly the big bird and with more money spent on exam papers he eventually runs out of fund to complete his course.

Now, Matt is really in deep trouble. After discussing with a few of his batch mate and advice from some of the flying instructors, Matt decided to apply for a Private Pilot flying Instructor with an experimental aircraft association based in Sungai Besi.

Time goes by and everything seems to be going fine with Matt until one fine day a student from hell found him. This guy, we're gonna call him Al as in Al pacino's Al. Al is notoriosly known for his sense of direction. Well his lack of sense of direction actually. This one time, his first solo. Al is supposed to do a circuit and landing which consist of a take off, one big round around the airfield- in this case Sungai Besi and a landing ALONE but somehow Al flew and lost all the way towards Klang Port. Those days Subang Airport is still being use by Airasia and it is kinda busy .

Due to Al's critical situation, the airport authority put all arriving airplanes on hold and guided Al to Subang Aiport for landing.

While all of this event unfold Matt was still waiting for Al at Sungai Besi and not long after that he received a call from Al explaining to him about the whole charade. Matt immedietly took a cab to Subang Airport for the rescue and upon reaching the aircraft he saw Al was still in the cockpit stunned and fiddling with a device. Matt finds out later that it's actually a GPS. Yup! This is 1999 and this guy already owns a GPS which is a luxury item at that time and yet he is lost. Remember that scene in the movie 'UP' where the kid lost his GPS ? Yup he should've just throw it outside the cockpit.

As time goes by Matt managed to secure a few teaching contracts and one fine evening lady luck did smile on him and he managed to nail a contract to present the experimental aircraft to the Prime Minister of Malaysia then, Mahathir during the LIMA event in langkawi but there's a catch. He must bear all the costs himself. From the aircraft fuel, food, lodging and what not for the whole trip. Who better to provide all the mulah if not for the notorious Mister "I don't know where I am" Al. Matt proposed the idea to Al and after consulting his dad, finally he agreed to cover the expenses for the whole trip.

Thing about chains of error is it's kinda hard for you to stop it once it has started unless you wake up jump up and really do some drastic manouvre to break it.

The experimental aircraft range is not that great. It's a very basic aircraft with very basic equipment. After giving it much thought Matt decided it is best for them to spend a night in Ipoh and then proceed to Langkawi the morning after. Ipoh is a small town but that doesn't mean it lacked a decent nightlife. To celebrate their future success Matt went to a small bar there and oh boy, celebrate they did.

On the road the authority tells you not to drink and drive and same goes with flying. Nobody in their right mind would drink and fly. That's just plain crazy. MAS has the golden rule of 10 hours bottle to throttle. That's 10 hours sobering up before flight. In Indian Airlines they up it 1 step further by installing a breathalyser in the office !

As luck or rather bad luck, Matt and Al was piss drunk that night. I still recall Matt confessed he doesn't even remember how they managed to get back to their room.

Come Saturday morning departure time, they were not at the airplane. The Ipoh Airfield control tower managed to get hold of Matt to inform him that the latest that he can depart to attend the event is at 12 noon which means after that he won't be able to catch the prime minister in time. Half awake and sobering Matt wakes up and get ready for the flight. En route to the airport Matt realized that he is in no shape to fly but the show must go on and he asked Al to fly and he would do the monitoring duty like preparing the documents, calling the air traffic control ( we call them ATC ) for clearance- read you work and I sleep

" rotate! " Matt commanded. Slowly Al lifted the little aircraft and heads for the sky. You see if you've been in a small aircraft before it is so easy to doze off. The droning of the engine sound, the wind on your face, oh so peaceful. That's exactly what happened to Matt. Not even 5 minutes into the flight Matt was already heading to slumberland...

After quite some time Matt opens up his eyes and a surprise sight of deep blue sea under him and clouds and bright blue sky in front if him. Thing is, in aviation, Peninsula Malaysia is not that big. As you're cruising about say 3000 feet you can easily see the east and west coast and with only the sea under him it is quite worrisome because they're either in the gulf of Thailand or south china sea OR the Indian ocean.

" eer bro where are we? " Matt asked casually, yawning and rubbing his eyes. Al just look at him with a face that as if he has just seen a ghost and answered "... I don't know captain ..."

With that, Matt immedietly look around, trying to grasp the weight of the situation and guess what? They're runnin out of fuel. " how long did I dozed off ? " Matt asked in desperation. " about more than 1 hour "

Slowly Matt pulls out a stick of marlboro reds and light it up, thinking. Talking to himself, Matt whispered " if I'm gonna go today so be it but god, please have mercy on this two lost souls amen " with that Matt turn to his left and saw between the clouds, rainbows peeking at them. It got him thinking, if there's rainbow, there must be land somewhere there. " okay Al, my controls and you revert to support duty okay. Inshallah we'll be okay. God's willing" Matt immedietly turn the small bird to the left and descent to a lower level. They did try to call various ATC ( air traffic control ) but their radio seems to be failing them. Talking about Murphy's Law.

On the descent Matt saw a patch of beach and decided that would be his landing strip just in case he ran out of fuel before he could do the landing.

" alhamdulilah Al look!! In case we runs out of fuel we're gonna crash there okay. " Matt pointed to the beach. At this moment, Al is totally panicked and to be honest he's just a passenger then. As they were decending the engine started to cough out black smoke and startled not long after ... total silence

What happened after, will change Matt's life forever. As they were approaching the beach he saw a stretch of road not far away and decided to gamble to glide towards the road. Thing about powerless glide is you can only have certain amount of lift to get you certain distance. I can get into all the technical details but I wouldn't want to bore you to death now do we? So back to the misadventure. After checking around for cars Matt managed to successfully land his aircraft in the middle of the freeway. Slowly the airplane rolls to a complete stop . Without delay Matt got out of the plane and push it to the left most lane to avoid collision. The weird thing or luck, whatever you want to call it, there is not a single car in sight.

Matt noticed a farmer not far from where he is standing. He gave it a thought and decided to approach the farmer to ask for directions. Slowly at first he ran and halfway through the 4 lanes highway he sprint toward the farmer who is still clearly stunned with the sight in front of him.

" Assalamualaikum tuan! Tumpang tanya. Saya ni kat mana ye ? ( peace be upon you dear good sir, may I know where I am? ) " Matt nervously ask the farmer

With a crooked smile and his tobacco stained teeth shines gloriously under the golden evening sun the farmer replied " ... Sawadeekap ! "

Meanwhile in Langkawi, the PM is still waiting for the aircraft and since there is no contact have been made they have initiated a search and rescue operations. Matt also told me that one of the Thais airforce general is so furious with their air defence force for letting this small bird entered their airspace undetected.

With no passport or any kind of travelling document our ambassador have to fly all the way from Bangkok to rescue them and fly somebody from KL to bring the aircraft back.

Unfortunately Matt was stripped off his flying licence and banned for life. As for Al god only knows what happened to him.

As Matt uttered the last line. I was totally speechless with my friend's adventure. Should I laugh? Or should I be empatic towards him? We went our separate ways after that cup of coffee and that was the last time I've seen him.

Putting on my helmet and firing up my faithful Honda C70, I thanked god that I managed to complete my whole flying course without a glitch. Well maybe not with flying colours but hey! A little bit of odd colours wouldn't do any harm right?

Now do you still think that everyone can fly? Maybe not.

Till then adios