So the first weeks have gone by, relatively UN-eventfully. Take 25 people from all across the world and put them in a building together, make them work, eat, hang, sleep, and exercise together, and you have the premise for a MTV show. Real World Qatar.
By the way, we arent an "undisclosed location in South West Asia" anymore, I am allowed to tell you all that I am in Qatar.
So, we are sitting around, doing what aircrews do (read: dodging real work). My phone rings, we got a mission. There are call signs for all the missions we do here in the Air-Evac world, and they are probably controlled info, but believe me, they are just like you see on TV. Something that sounds really bad-ass because the pilots like saying it over the radio. So I will make up one for the purposes of literary greatness. "Thunderpig 99" was going from Qatar to Germany with patients, and we are the crew tasked to take them.
In our myriad of regulations, there are very strict rules built in about what we are allowed to do before a mission. We went into "crew rest" meaning we arent allowed to do any official duties, they cant call us, and we are supposed to be eating/sleeping before a mission. Well, I woke up at 6 that morning, all jazzed to go fly, and pack all my stuff for an extended stay in Germany (planes magically break in desirable locations), so I wanted to have enough clean under-oos.
Nobody asked my opinion about when I would like the mission to go. We were slated to be alerted after 9pm, so I tried to take a nap. No such luck. Up all day, get the call at 9. Hit the DFAC for some snacks/sandwiches. Went for our briefing, and we were told the mission was canceled. Before we could stand up, the mission was back on. Then it wasnt. So we decided to wait. About 2 hours later, "THE MISSION IS DEFINATELY ON AND WE ONLY HAVE 15 MINUTES!!! OH MY GOD GET TO THE PLANE!!!"
Yeah right. Go to customs, sit. Go to plane and run all our gear on (>750 lbs) in about 5 minutes. All sweaty and ready to go, pilot saunters down from the flight deck and tells us the ramp has been closed for 3 hours and we cant leave anyway. Its now midnight, got up at 6.
So for all of you that are already afraid of flying, skip this section. Most of you probably assume that a plane is a magical car that is imbued with powers by wizards the government keeps on staff to perform such tasks. Little do you know that the C-17 Globemaster III is a giant tangle of wires, tubes, and dilithum crystals. Things break on it all the time. Same with the civilian planes. The key is to make sure the right combination of things is broken, and you can still fly. In this case, the fuel pump for the number 3 engine was not working. Should be a "hard break" right? (Hard broke: not going to fly. Soft Broke: probably will fly, lets give it a go.) Well, the pilot told her babysitter that she would be back in 2 days, so she was going to make it work. If they overloaded the fuel cells in the outer wings, they could pump fuel into the tank for numbers 1 and 3 as needed, therefore we don't need the pump in 3 right? Sure. Also, the statement "Do we NEED a weather radar to fly? My i-Phone says there isn't any weather in Germany..." was uttered.
Qatari's open the ramp, we load patients, take off. Everyone goes to sleep (patients) and we stare blankly at the wall. Up for 20 hours now. The normal 7 hour flight was extended to 8 (ahem...fuel??) because of head winds. Finally land in Germany (up for 28 hours, starting to get sorta tired...) get rid of our patients, turn in our super secret stuff, guns, get a phone, and go to the hotel. For those of you that havent ever stayed awake for more than a 24 hour period, the next morning, you actually come out of your fog a bit because your brain is used to being up. So we decided to do the only natural thing, go get drunk.
Two schnitzels, a Knudel, and 2 liters of beer later, we were all ready for bed. Slept 12 hours and started our "vacation" in Germany. But that is another story...
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