Trigger happy authorities
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2601597/Swiss-pensioner-flying-world-plane-built-forced-land-Indonesian-fighter-jet-arrested-gunpoint-entering-airspace.html
Better pay for your overflight permits next time…
That first picture is just ridiculous. I can’t believe the soldiers managed to hold their rifles straight without breaking down in laughter.
But perhaps that is why they are lying flat on the ground …
Not to mention the great tactical setup. All of them in a circle, target in the middle, start firing, “kill each other dead” (c) Robert de Niro in Ronin.
Well, after they didn’t see a 777 go through their airspace (I don’t think many people believe that MH370 really just about avoided it), the Indonesians need to prove they can in fact find an airplane. Luckily – for them – this seems to have happened during daylight working hours….
This guy has previous form
Better pay for your overflight permits next time…
The guy was actually on a flight plan to my home airport. The local handling company were quite puzzled when he never showed up, until they read the papers next day…
Something sounds fishy though. He’s been flying private all over the world for years & obviously intimately familiar with the concept of overflight & landing permits etc. Sounds like maybe his flight planners botched the permit dates or something trivial like that. I’m amazed Indo even let him into their airspace in the first place. Usually area control will deny you airspace entrance if you don’t have a permit…
I recall reading a trip writeup (by someone I know personally) who flew an old twin, G-reg or N-reg, around South America, and he reported that some of the overflight permits (arranged by one of the overflight agents) turned out to be simply nonexistent. He didn’t have kind words to say about the agent, who apparently just left them to hang out and dry.
The overflight agents are not massively expensive – of the order of $100-200 per permit which is probably just the average bribe to the ministry official, plus the agent’s markup. So they aren’t likely to do any great due diligence. They will make contact, make the payment, and that “should work”. From what I hear from ferry pilot friends, some are a lot better than others.
3 years ago I was quoted about €200 for the permits to fly from Crete (LGST) to Luxor in Egypt, and back. Luxor had avgas at the time but I never did that trip, partly because there were, ahem, not many alternates and absolutely no alternates with avgas.
Confirmed – a permit snafu…
Poor guy. Assumed all permits were in order, but apparently the permit agent had a pending overflight request. Obviously the fault lies with his agent. They should have told him not to depart, or at the very least called him on his satphone while enroute – that’s what the “real” biz jet flight ops agents do.
Also there’s no doubt MH370 being the major cause of this escalating farce…
He is pretty forthright in that blog. It probably won’t be a good idea to try to fly there again after writing that 
I have heard so many stories of 3rd world corruption… in one case several airport officials stood in a line with their hands out, waiting for some US$ as the pilot walked past.
The problem is that some bits of southern Europe aren’t much better; the main difference is that in Europe it is illegal, so somebody taking bribes can’t deal directly with the “customers” but has to set up a trusted front man. For example an airport manager who is “selling parking places” will use a handling agent to run the “business”.
