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16 July 2017

New book - Dear Sky by Arthur Mebius. Dear Sky tells the story of the planes and people of Air Koryo, North Korea's airline, through the photography of Arthur Mebius, who made three trips to North Korea to complete this unique project. The photography is stunning in a mostly reportage style, bringing this unusual airline to life.  In the shop now.

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Confessions and revelations of an overweight middle-aged international flight steward

By Guest blogger Felix Von Tempelhof

 Good morning! Do you know the feeling of wanting to kill yourself? Breakfast after a long night flight is the time where I want to bring my life to an end each and every time. It is the most terrible part of my glamourous job as an international air steward. When passengers open their little eyes after a bad night’s sleep in economy class, the first thing they see is me standing in front of them with my tray of hot towels. I force myself to smile and try not to put my true feelings on display.

 Here is what I was doing just a couple of minutes ago: enjoying peace and quiet in the crew rest, hoping never to go out into the cabin again. I don’t usually sleep in the crew rest. I can’t. On hundreds of flights that I worked, I managed to fall asleep maybe twice. It’s still nice to be in a secluded space, away from the crowds. I usually spend my time there trying to fall asleep for one hour, then give up and just lie there. Then, when break is over, I get summoned brutally by a colleague. Time to go back to work. Sigh! In a way, serving breakfast in the morning gives me a strong feeling of superiority. I have regained consciousness before passengers have. Most of them don’t seem to ever regain it, or have it to lose in the first place.

 Before breakfast service starts, we carefully select one of the 387 different lighting scenarios the plane has to offer (on the newer planes in the fleet), 385 of them completely useless brainfarts of overmotivated aircraft engineers. In my humble opinion, “on” and “off” would be completely sufficient, but oh well, who has ever given a damn about my humble opinion? Right! On the older planes in the fleet, on and off is the way things are done, it’s either pitch dark or the cabin is soaked into neon light with the ambiance of an Indian fast food restaurant.

 As I trot through the cabin with my hot towels, 300 disoriented passengers, each looking more ugly than the one before in most cases, open their eyes, slobber running down their cheeks without a clue who they are and where they are. I would estimate that around half of them do not have a clue for the remainder of the day, either. The reactions when passengers see me with my hot towels range from "what is this?" via "no thank you" (usually from those passengers who should definitely freshen up a little bit) to a surprised "oh, it’s hot" when they touch them. Yes, that’s why we call them hot towels, sweetheart! I told you a second ago and you didn’t listen. Sometimes a hot towel accidentally falls on a sleeping passenger’s head when he or she has behaved like an idiot during the flight. "Oh, me so sorry!" The hot towels are white when we give them to passengers. When we get them back, some of them have changed their colour into beige. Questions?

After collecting the towels that people have swiped through their faces, armpits and whatever else part of the body you can imagine, it’s time to finally serve our delicious breakfast that we carefully prepared for you. Oh, it smells so yummy, the odour of yummy, artificial omelettes that have never seen an egg in their entire life and fresh coffee, bad breath and old farts and stinky feet billowing through the cabin. There´s just nothing better!

 Breakfast onboard a plane is such a frustrating affair. If there is a choice of meals, one is definitely flourescent omelettes, lovingly manufactured for the price of twenty cents (including packing and handling). When we heat them up in the oven, they change their colour from artificial yellow into light blue and then turn green just before we serve them. Sometimes we accidentally overheat them, for example when a new colleague works the galley or somebody just doesn’t care much. Then, the omelettes turn into little black brickstones. And, interesting fact, many passengers don’t know this: our omelettes glow in the dark! Try it!

 So there I am, standing in the middle of a crowd of passengers resembling a Morrocan bazar, all waiting for their turn to use one of the (too few, of course, we can squeeze in more seats instead) bathrooms. Hopelessly trying to move past with my meal trolley to serve passengers their delicious breakfast, I think about what way to kill myself would be the least painful for myself and the most spectacular as far as a goodbye with a bang is concerned. I decide to cut my veins but abandon the idea, knowing how hard it will be to find a sharp knife anywhere on the plane. I look at my watch. I´ve been up for twenty-six hours now. That’s why I feel so tired, that’s why I am pouring orange juice in coffee cups. Tiredness is a very peculiar state of mind and not a good one for seeing other people, even less passengers.

 If we are lucky, there is no meal choice for breakfast. Then we just throw out little breakfast boxes or omelettes or whatever without the usual back-and-forth à la "Sir, good morning, rise and shine, hope you’ve had a good night’s sleep. Would you like our egg frittata or the cinnamon pancake?" At this time of the day, passengers are not able to take decisions, so why offer them a choice anyways?

 Please imagine the following conversation:

Tired flight attendant: “Would you like some coffee?”

Passenger, his headphones on: “Huh?”

Me: “Would you like some coffee?”

Passenger: “Orange Juice.”

Me, you idiot written all over my face: “I just have coffee for the time being. Would you like some?”

No reaction. Whatever.

Flight attendant moves on to the next row of half-asleep passengers.

Passenger in the previous row is totally disgusted at my negligence after not reacting to my question. “I want coffee.” Flight attendant walkes back, a bit unnerved. Pours coffee into a cup. Would love to pour coffee over the passenger instead.

“Sir, would you like milk or sugar for your coffee?”

“Coffee!”

“Yes, it’s coffee, would you like milk and sugar for it?”

“Orange juice.”

“Would you like sugar as well?”

“No, thank you!” (This line I just made up. It rarely occurs that passengers say thank you. Once every ten years.)

One second later, the same passenger, now panicking. “Give me sugar also!”

This or very similar conversations occurs about 200 times on each flight, making what seems like a short hour and a half of breakfast service seem like an endless ocean full of tears that I am drowning in. It is so very frustrating and I seriously think about seeking professional help to overcome my breakfast trauma.

The good thing about serving breakfast on the plane: the flight is almost over and I can either go home or cry myself to sleep in a comfortable hotel bed. That´s the good news. And the only good news. The bad news is that after serving meals and drinks, the trays, boxes, cups and glasses don’t magically collect themselves and move back into the galley. Serving disoriented passengers with foul smell coming out of their mouths breakfast is one thing. Collecting it back is yet another. You would find it hard to imagine just how many absurd variations there are to pile one plastic glass, one cardboard coffee cup and a small box with a tiny yoghurt cup, the crumbles of a muffin into each other in the most obtruse way, resembling the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, an elephant or the Niagara Falls.

 To make matters even worse for the poor service slave that I am, occasionally, passengers hand you over a soiled diaper or a plastic cup full of pubic hair (true story). I am sure that colleagues have collected more awful things from passengers although right now I really can’t think what they could be. Some extremely helpful passengers carry their trays back into the galley and pile them up in the little space that we have there. With the best intentions no doubt but it makes me want to go berserk.

 When we flight attendants look at you passengers in absolute disgust, don’t take it personally, it’s probably a just due to a recollection of our last ten longhaul breakfasts just running past our inner eye. We ask for your kind understanding. Thank you very much!

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Cathay Pacific 747 farewell

December 2016

Cathay Pacific is one of the biggest and most important airlines in the world: number ten globally by sales revenue, number one in the world for cargo. Its base, Hong Kong, is number eight in the world for passengers and number one in the world for cargo. No plane symbolises Cathay’s march towards Europe, and for that matter their long and prestigious transpacific runs to Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York like the Boeing 747.

 Cathay Pacific was founded as the Roy Farrell Export-Import Co. in 1946 by a pair of ex-military pilots, Sydney de Kantzow (an Australian) and Roy Farrell (an American) to serve Hong Kong; the name Cathay Pacific was chosen later the same year during a late-night session at the Manila Hotel. (Incidentally, in Chinese the airline is aptly called “grand and peaceful state”.) Because of Hong Kong’s status as a British Dependent Territory from the mid 1800s until being handed back to China on July 1, 1997, it didn’t have statehood and therefore was unable to negotiate much in the way of long haul air treaties, and most of the flying from there was done by British Airways. In Cathay’s early days, it was only able to secure traffic rights to local ports such as Taipei, Bangkok, Singapore, Manila, Jakarta and down to Australia.

 The fleet included Douglas DC-3 and Lockheed Electra propliners, followed by early jets such as the Convair CV-880A (a fleet of nine, mostly acquired from VIASA and Japan Airlines) and the Boeing 707 (a fleet of fifteen, mostly acquired from Northwest Orient). Cathay moved up a league in 1975 with the purchase of two widebody L-1011 Tristar widebodies from Lockheed, a love affair which resulted in the procurement of nineteen more secondhand examples, mostly from Eastern Airlines in the USA but also British Airways, Air Lanka, Court Line and Air Transat. These were L-1011-1s with limited range, and Cathay was still restricted to the local region.

 The big breakthrough came in 1980 when Cathay finally secured traffic rights to serve London, and received its first Boeing 747-267B on July 20, 1979, Rolls-Royce engines not only pacifying its colonial masters in the United Kingdom but also for compatibility with the Tristar fleet. The registration displayed local pride: VR-HKG. After being inaugurated on the Sydney run in August and bringing extra capacity to local routes within Asia, the jumbo’s London Gatwick debut (via Bahrain) took place the following year, on July 16, 1980.

 The fleet of 747-200s expanded to twenty-seven aircraft: fifteen people movers and twelve dedicated freighters. Cathay Pacific opened transpacific service to Vancouver in 1983 and to San Francisco in 1986. Half a dozen 747-367s joined the fleet starting in 1985, bringing extra capacity in the stretched upper deck, but incorporating the same cockpit, wing and engines as the -200 – a “minimum change” upgrade. A major evolution to the 747 was in the works, driven by customers including Cathay, and 1989 Boeing unveiled the 747-400 which went on to become the best-selling variant of the jumbo, arriving just in time for the post-Cold War peace dividend of the 1990s. Cathay Pacific bought eighteen passenger models and twelve freighters directly from Boeing and, in the 2000s, another seven ex-Singapore Airlines 747-412 Megatops despite having different Pratt & Whitney powerplants.

 The 747 in Cathay’s jade green colours was a staple at airports across Asia and further afield as the airline took its place among the biggest travel brands in the world. In 1998, one of the 747-467s operated the inaugural flight into Hong Kong’s Chep Lap Kok airport which replaced the famous but undersized Kai Tak, with a fifteen-hour, thirty-five minute flight from New York’s JFK via the North Pole. By the mid-2000s Cathay jumbos were operating daily passenger service at cities as distant from Hong Kong as New York, Johannesburg, Frankfurt and Dubai, as well as multiple frequencies to strongholds such as London, Los Angeles and across Australia. Due to the volumes on local routes in the region, the 747s were mainstays to trips to Bangkok, Singapore, Beijing, cities in Japan, plus of course the “golden route” to Taipei.

 However, the twin-engined 777-300ER can do pretty much anything the four-engined 747 can (but burning half the fuel and needing half the maintenance), so when deliveries of Boeing’s twenty-first century miracle machine to Hong Kong began in late 2007, the writing was on the wall. By 2014 the passenger fleet of 747-400s at Cathay was down to half a dozen, and its last long haul destination was its first US destination: San Francisco, which ended on September 1. After that 747s were only used ad hoc to regional cities such as Taipei, Bangkok, Bali and Singapore when traffic demanded the extra capacity, with one just route still scheduled, the evening Hong Kong to Tokyo Haneda CX542, returning to base the following morning as CX543.

 Cathay occupies a special place in the hearts of Australians, as Hong Kong is a major stopover for Aussies travelling to or from Europe – a place to spend a few days en route to get a suit or some shirts made, shop in the markets, stroll up Nathan Road, flag down a G&T at the Peninsula if budget allows. Many Cathay pilots are Australian, some gravitating directly from flying school, others as refugees from the shutdown of Ansett Australia in 2001. Along with Singapore Airlines and Thai, Cathay Pacific could be considered an Australian flag carrier, so important is the market to the airline’s bottom line, and so important is Cathay to mobilising generations of Australians.

 When Cathay announced the last flight of the 747 would take place on the Haneda route on October 1, 2016, this Australian couldn’t resist one last flight on a Cathay 747, and booked a ride using British Airways points on CX543 on September 27, 2016.

 I stayed overnight at the Royal Park Hotel which is located right inside Haneda’s modern international terminal, so I needed to take no more than a few steps from the hotel reception area to Cathay’s check in desk. Although I was booked in Economy, I was able to use the First Class check-in thanks to my Emerald (top tier) status with fellow oneworld alliance member British Airways.

 With nine First and forty-six Business seats on the jumbo, it was unusual to find a line-up at the premium class check-in desks but Cathay’s capable ground staff dealt with each customer swiftly and I was soon checked in by a friendly and helpful agent despite my two legs being on different bookings, and my two heavy bags were tagged through to Manchester, clearing the way for an uninterrupted nine hour stay in Cathay’s lounges at Hong Kong.

 Cathay have laminated seat maps of the fleet at the check-in desk to show passengers where they’re sitting and what’s on offer (why every airline don’t do this is a mystery). I wanted to steal the 747 seat map but with three days left of 747 ops it might still be missed. I can only assume its now in the possession of some sticky-fingered enthusiast who was among the last to check-in on October 1. With help from the seat map, I picked a seat down the back in one of the outer pairs where 3-4-3 becomes 2-4-2.

 After clearing security I used my BA gold status to spend an hour in the Cathay lounge on the top floor and commands an impressive view of airfield action. The approach to land involves a low-level bank to join finals very late, and every minute another jet, many of them widebody 777s and 787s on domestic runs, curved around to touch down outside the panoramic windows. A choice of Chinese or Japanese breakfast was offered, cooked to order and signalled when ready with a radio-controlled buzzer. I was pleased to see our 747 wasn’t the only one of its kind on the move, as a Thai jumbo landed from Bangkok. There is plenty of life in the old girl yet – on top of thirty-seven 747-8i at Koreanair, Air China and Lufthansa, AeroTransport Databank lists 185 active 747-400 passenger aircraft (British Airways, China Airlines, KLM, Qantas, Lufthansa and Thai all remain committed to the type at the time of writing).

  I wandered down to gate 145 where a familiar sight awaited. The jade-green jumbo sat nose-in to the loading area, two jetbridges attached, cockpit and upper deck presiding over the surroundings. Passengers took pictures from the glassed-in boarding area – all Hong Kong Chinese, one of the most mobile populations in the world, have a love affair with the 747, and Japan too, since JAL and All Nippon at their peak operated more than two hundred machines including dozens dedicated to domestic runs, the biggest national fleet of jumbos in the world.

 At this point, the very end of Cathay’s 747 operations, the fleet was down to three machines – B-HUI, -HUJ and HKT. The first two were delivered new to Cathay as 747-467s, and the latter an ex-Singapore Airlines -412. From spying the registration painted on the nosegear, today’s CX543 was to be operated by B-HKT, distinctive also for the Pratt & Whitneys under the wing, as opposed to Cathay’s original Rolls-Royce powered fleet.

  Nonetheless, there was no sign of a previous owner. Boarding the aircraft definitely induced a grand and peaceful state, the soft green tones reinforcing the Cathay corporate brand which stands for reliability and luxury. With retirement of the fleet in the works for some time, the 747s never received the most up-to-date hard product installed on their latest Cathay 777-300ERs, sticking with the herringbone business class that has now been replaced everywhere else (except Air Canada, Virgin Atlantic and Air New Zealand. But the kind-hearted welcome and clean aircraft appearance and smell suggested a machine in the prime of its life; most passengers would never have guessed it was three days from retirement.

 Demonstrating the appeal of the Tokyo to Hong Kong route, with over twenty flights a day from Narita and Haneda every day, almost all of the 747’s 359 seats were occupied (breaking down as 9 first, 46 business, 26 premium economy, 278 economy) and we were ready to push back for an ontime departure at 1035 local time.

  We made a long tour of the airfield, rolling past the Nippon maintenance hangars where the latest 787s received some attention, then out on a pier to the new runway 05 which extends into Tokyo Bay on stilts in the water. With a roar from the four massive PW4000 engines, we were rolling. After a thirty second race down the runway, the nose rose into the air and the whole machine levitated magically upwards. As Japan fell away beneath, we rolled into a series of turns to set course to the west for our four-and-a-half hour trip to China.

 Soon after the seatbelt signs were switched off, a crew member announced that Mount Fuji was visible off the right side of the aircraft. I hopped out of my seat and found a free window on the other side, and there it was, rising 12,388 feet, the tallest mountain in Japan and in the words of UNESCO, “Inspiring artists and poets and the object of pilgrimage for centuries.” I’d seen it covered in snow before, but at the end of a hot summer, it was somehow futuristic and intimidating, this enormous yet mute black pyramid. Photos were snapped by passengers and then as Fuji-san slipped out of sight we settled down for an early lunch, served on trays in economy.

 I had the Chinese beef option, which came with a prawn cocktail appetiser, a bread roll and a Kit-Kat, washed down with green tea and water. Although fairly basic, it was tasty and filling. Trays were cleared away and I sat back to read and listen to the dull roar of the queen of the skies cutting through the upper atmosphere at over 500mph, 35,000 feet above the East China Sea.

 All too soon the distant thunder of the engines died away and a momentary sense of weightlessness signalled the top of descent into Chep Lap Kok airport. As our altitude on the flight map began unwinding, the captain came on the PA and announced that the 747s had only three days left to fly before being retired, paying tribute to the type’s long history in Cathay service and that the crew would be sad to see the end of passenger service for the jumbo – a classy touch.

 Soon we were down in the haze of Hong Kong and the skyline came into view as the flaps were extended for landing. With a thump the wheels were lowered and we were on finals for runway 25R. We returned to earth with a rattle and a smudge of blue smoke whippinh out from under the wing. Spoilers rose to dump the lift and settle the full weight of the jumbo onto the wheels for effective braking; we smoothly decelerated to walking pace and turned off towards the bustling terminal area for parking, fifteen minutes ahead of our scheduled 1500 arrival time.

 As passengers deplaned I asked if I could visit the cockpit and was escorted up the stairs to meet the pilots. We had a brief chat about the 747’s planned delivery flights to California and Bruntingthorpe UK for scrapping while the cabin crew took turns sitting in the pilots’ seats for photos as it was their last work trip on a jumbo.

  The captain then invited me to sit in the captain’s seat for a photo of my own. I thought of all the men and women who had sat here during the hundred thousand hours B-HKT had clocked up since it was rolled off the line at Seattle in December 1992 for Singapore Airlines, and, since April 1997, Cathay Pacific – landings at dawn and dusk, long nights across the Pacific, daylight crossings of oceans, deserts, whole continents, in every imaginable weather conditions.

  The last passenger flight, also CX543, operated as promised on October 1, a frenzy of avgeek enthusiasm and nostalgia for the end of an era. The following week, on October 8, Cathay operated a special sightseeing flight for 359 employees, each of whom donated HK$747 to the Hong Kong Breast Cancer Foundation, flight number CX8747, with the airline using social media to advise the public of the best vantage points to watch the aircraft fly over the city it had served for decades.

 Twenty 747 freighters (six 747-400ERFs and fourteen 747-8Fs) fly on at Cathay but the era of 747 passenger flights at Cathay Pacific is over; my last trip on one was a memorable way to say goodbye. Thanks Cathay and thanks jumbo!

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IN PRAISE OF BERLIN’S TEGEL AIRPORT

October 2016

Welcome to my first blog post at The Airline Boutique. I can think of few subjects for avgeeks more interesting that the airport I am sitting in right now — Berlin’s Tegel.

The first thing that is worth mentioning is that Tegel is tiny, not much bigger than a flying club. It is a 1960s concrete hexagonal brutalist version of Southend or Coventry, except, incredibly, a quarter of a century after the reunification of Germany, it remains the main gateway to the capital city of the world’s fourth biggest economy.

It was supposed to have been replaced four years ago by mighty Brandenburg International, but alas Brandenburg’s grand opening, scheduled for 2011, was called off due to, initially, malfunctioning smoke evacuation equipment, but since then, well, to paraphrase Marlon Brando in The Wild One (“Johnny, what are you rebelling against?”), “What have you got?” Electrical problems, software problems, and most recently, the ceiling of the main terminal is “too heavy”. The opening has been postponed repeatedly, and currently resides somewhere at the end of the decade.

Of course, this is a great source of embarrassment to Germans who pride themselves on being a country that can do big public works projects — their USP is getting it together, being organised, being rational. However, I love Tegel and I hope Brandenburg never opens. (Btw, this is a wish that might yet be granted, as traffic shoehorned into Tegel plus East Berlin’s old Schonefeld airport, today the home of easyJet and Ryanair, now exceeds the planned capacity of Brandenburg, so if it opens today it’ll already be too small; combined with the ongoing construction woes, there are serious rumours that the best way forward is to demolish it and just start again.)

The purpose of this post isn’t to mock the Brandenburg debacle, but to praise Tegel. At the time of it’s construction in the 1960s, deep in the freeze of the Cold War, flying in and out of West Berlin was both legally complex (aircraft had to fly the flag of the occupying powers — USA, UK, France, and even flight deck crew had to have passports of those countries) and navigationally demanding (inbound flights had to stick to three corridors through East German airspace at 10,000 feet or be shot down) so traffic was strictly O&D (“origin and destination”) only. That negated the need for any meaningful airside area for connecting traffic, because there was none.

That means the layout of this airport is unique. Every flight is handled in isolation — it has it’s own check-in desk, and next to the check-in desk is a gap through which one takes a few steps to one’s own security checkpoint. On the other side of the checkpoint is a gate lounge, with a jetbridge that leads to the aircraft door. One drawback is there’s no rail link from the city — no-one expected Tegel to stay open long enough to pay back the cost of putting one in. But if your taxi drops you at the right door, it’s about twenty metres from the car to the aircraft. Throw in the lovely brutalist style that reeks of 70s Berlin (Bowie, Iggy, Tangerine Dream, World On A Wire) and you have a truly unique air travel experience.

Yes it sucks to be Air-Berlin, who ordered new planes and opened new routes expecting, back in 2011, to have a big hub airport serving the German capital, and now are stuck with a patchwork of remote stands and a super crap temporary terminal. And Germans who pride themselves on being a country that can manage big public works projects can never laugh at Greek or Russian Olympic construction efforts again. But if you are arriving or departing at Tegel airport, you must agree - there’s no airport like Tegel, let alone as the gateway to one of the world’s major cities.

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The Island Hopper

January 2017

With the retirement of so many classic airliner types – even the mighty 747 is now fully established on the endangered species list – there is less and less out there for a hardcore airline enthusiast. The Island Hopper, covering a big chunk of the Pacific Ocean with five stops on the way from Honolulu to Guam, remains a must-have.

 Air Micronesia – Air Mike for short – was established in 1968 by Continental Airlines to serve the chain of US-administered islands that run across the Pacific, starting with Majuro in the Marshall Islands and through Micronesia all the way to the Philippines, with a focus on the US trust territory of Guam. Air Mike began operations with a pair of Boeing 727-100s with Teflon-coated undersides as some of the runways were made of coral. Juju was a full passenger aircraft with 117 seats and Muju was a combi with half the main deck for cargo plus seventy-eight passengers. Continental’s airline-within-an-airline provided an essential link to the outside world that previously took weeks by occasional ship to other ports. The 727-100s and later -200s had been replaced by Boeing 737-800s by the time Continental merged with United Airlines in December 2010; the flight was renumbered UA154 from Honolulu to Guam and UA155 in the opposite direction back to Hawaii. Otherwise the Island Hopper still runs pretty much as it has done since the late 60s.

 Presently, the flight operates on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and routes from Honolulu to Guam via Majuro, Kwajalein, Kosrei, Pohnpei, and Chuuk a.k.a. Truk. (Kosrae is omitted on Wednesdays.) The first two stops are in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the latter three are in the Federated States of Micronesia. Both are island countries that were granted independence from the United States in 1986. Guam itself is part of the United States, albeit an “unincorporated and organised territory” rather than an actual state. The stops along the way are in some of the most remote places in the world that have jet service, small and isolated islands and atolls in the middle of the world’s greatest ocean.

 THE JOURNEY BEGINS

 I was planning my route home from visiting family and friends in Australia back to England and realised this might be a good chance to ride the Island Hopper. A one-way trip booked as a stand-alone ticket was over £900, so initially it was out of the question, but I realised I would of course need to get out of Guam somehow anyway, so I circled back to United’s website, this time clicking the “multi-city” option. I combined Honolulu to Guam with Guam to Tokyo and Tokyo to San Francisco (with the Tokyo to Frisco leg having the added bonus of being operated by a soon-to-be-retired 747); the whole lot came in at under £800 with the Island Hopper leg itself a very attractive £234. After checking I could get a positioning leg up from Sydney the day before on Qantas at a reasonable fare, I pressed the buy button. I had to add in hotels at both ends because the Island Hopper is a fourteen hour flight that leaves Honolulu at 0725, no point in starting tired; and arrives into Guam at 1755 scheduled, too late for anything meaningful to connect onwards, at least with United. (After booking, a fellow avgeek pointed out that United fly later the same evening on to Manila via Palau and this tag-on is considered a continuation of the Island Hopper, but six sectors in a day is enough, especially with those two extra legs being in darkness.)

  My alarm went off at 0500 in Waikiki Beach and after a quick shower I was in a cab at 0515 and at the terminal before 0600. I had a chat with a United employee about my mission and he thanked me for being early, but T minus one hour twenty-five didn’t seem over-cautious: for one thing I wasn’t sure if the Island Hopper counted as an international flight and hence what kind of formalities to expect (turns out it is considered international but as with all US-originating flights, there are no exit controls). I was also anxious that a United ticket agent didn’t spot that I was flying via the longest possible route to Guam and rebook me onto a nonstop (still a not-inconsiderable eight hours). All avgeeks know that overly helpful ticket agents can pose an existential threat to any deliberately multistop routing.

 Surprisingly, when I checked in online the night before and again at the airport self-service kiosk, it was possible to select a different seat for each of the six legs. In fact for the first four legs, 32A had empty seats next to it, and for the last two, the flight was so full that moving wouldn’t have made any difference so I stuck with the same seat all the way to Guam. Nonetheless the kiosk spat out six boarding passes, one for each leg – and for a paper collector, this was cause for minor celebration.

  Security was fast and easy and I enjoyed the walk to gate nine with the sides of the building open to the elements. Looking at the departures board (showing the Island Hopper’s destination as “Majuro”), the scale of Hawaii’s appeal to Japanese tourists was obvious, with ten departures to Tokyo Narita alone scheduled between before midday.

 The first light of dawn was in the east as we were called to board our Boeing 737-824. The interior was brand new and very comfortable, with personal TV screens on each seatback. As the day progressed I had a few chats with the pilots about the aeroplanes used, and learned that although Air Mike had dedicated aircraft, the present-day Island Hoppers are drawn from the United Airlines 737-800 pool and rotated back to the mainland after a few months as the salty atmosphere over the Pacific is corrosive to metal birds; such a pattern minimises the exposure of each individual airframe. The only difference is that when a new (to the Pacific) 737 joins the Guam base, it is fitted with a uprated brakes to help with the short runways along the route.

 I strapped into 32A and settled in for the medium haul trip to Majuro, announced over the PA as having a flight time of four hours and fifty-five minutes, pretty long for a 737. The announcement went on to apologise that due to the remote oceanic region in which we would be flying, there would be no inflight internet wireless available, but all the seatback entertainment including half a dozen movies would be free. These days I’m more of a fan of using airborne time for reading and contemplation, so the flight map was enough for me.

 HONOLULU to MAJURO

 As we pushed back right on time at 0725 local, the safety video, with which I would be intimately familiar by sunset, played for the first time, with subtitles in Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin) and Korean. We headed over to 08L past the Aloha Cargo hangar where four 737Fs and an ABX 767-300F were parked, and, aptly, at 0737 we were on our way, blasting out of Honolulu International past Waikiki Beach then banking away on course for Majuro with an initial cruising altitude of 34,000 feet.

  The cabin crew, with a long day ahead of them, came down the aisle handing out breakfast baskets containing a tasty hot sausage and scrambled egg muffin, a blueberry yoghurt, a fig bar, and service from the drinks cart. With nothing outside but water for hour after hour, I curled up under the complimentary blanket and got an hour’s sleep to compensate for the early start. When I woke up, we had climbed to our final cruising altitude of 36,000 feet.

  I thought back to the 1990s when this exact sector was one of the world’s last bookable flights for anyone hunting a ride on a Douglas DC-8, in the service of Air Marshall Islands.The aircraft, N799AL named Little Amy (derived from AMI – Air Marshall Islands), served with distinction on the route from Honolulu to Majuro as a combi initially with five pallet positions and one hundred passengers, later reconfigured in 1995 for nine pallet positions and fifty-two passengers. The versatile jetliner brought in cars, trucks, mail, building materials and other heavy equipment needed on the islands, and returned to Hawaii with freshly-caught blue fin tuna which was transferred onto Northwest Airlines 747s bound for Japan where the best specimens sold for up to $50,000 for a single fish. Little Amy also flew weekly charters from Honolulu to Kiribati (a.k.a. Christmas Island) serving a similar purpose – essential lifeline of supplies in, seafood exports out. I had made a tentative booking to fly on it, to log a DC-8, but I didn’t have much of a clue about how to get there and the booking was never paid for or flown and a ride on a DC-8 remained elusive as ever. Little Amy went to ATI at the turn of the century with its N799AL registration intact; incredibly, thanks to the initiative of aviation legend Sean Burris at Classic Jet Tours, I got a ride on this exact aircraft in 2011 from McClellan AFB in Sacramento to the DC-8’s birthplace in Long Beach, and back up to McClellan later the same day – two decades later.

 The five-hour flight passed quickly and we began our descent into Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, a pair of islands chains (the Sunrise Islands and the Sunset Islands) comprising thirty atolls and no less than 1,152 islands. The national population is 53,000, half of whom live on Majuro, the capital.

  Runway 07/25 of Amata Kabua International Airport was nearly as wide as the atoll on which it was situated, a majestic streak of sand, turf and palm trees sneaking around in a wide arc. We landed to the east at 1035 local time, two hours earlier than in Honolulu, but having crossed the International Dateline, it was now a day later, Tuesday. We turned left into the parking area at the far end, barely big enough for our 737; it was amazing to think this had once been home to a DC-8 operator. I noticed that the airport’s two fire engines had come out to meet us, which would happen at each stop; given how short some of the runways were, it was probably not a bad idea.

  I planned to disembark at each port; transit passengers were free to do so but had to take hand luggage with them. At the bottom of the boarding ramp was a baggage cart where bags could be dropped off which was helpful, and I went into the terminal, a primitive concrete building containing a snack counter selling drinks and sandwiches, and a table where an islander was selling gifts made of snow-white coral. It was incongrous to see the United Airlines metal sign by the door dividing passengers into two lanes (one for Group 1 Global Services and Group 2 Premier Access; and one for Groups 3-4-5) in such exotic surroundings. We picked up fuel at very port, which surprised me as the logistics of delivery jet fuel to these remote places must be costly, but the runways are too short to allow the extra weight of tankering fuel for more than one flight.

  MAJURO to KWAJALEIN

 The pilots who brought us from Honolulu were finished work for the day and would continue for the remaining nine hours to Guam as passengers, swapping with a fresh crew who had flown as passengers from Honolulu in seats 1A and 1B. Soon the flight was ready for boarding and I was heading back out across the scorched tarmac for our 737. Passengers took their seats, slightly less of us now. At 1140 we started up and swung around out of the small ramp onto the runway and backtracked before blasting off for a full power departure at 1146 from the 7,897 foot (2,407 metre) strip.

 After the long flight from Honolulu, from here on it was all short sectors of an hour or so each; in fact the hop over to Kwajalein, a domestic run within the Marshall Islands, was planned at forty-seven minutes and the cruising altitude was only 28,000 feet.

 The destination wasn’t a conventional one, even by Island Hopper standards. “Kwaj” is home to the Ronald Reagan Ballastic Missile Defense Test Site, formerly known as the Kwajalein Missile Range, comprising radar installations, optics, telemetry and communications equipment monitoring 750,000 square miles (1,900,000 square kilometres). The United States Army Garrison Kwajalein Atoll, shortened to USAG-KA, provides accomodation for 2,500 permament residents which includes 1,200 Lockheed-Martin and Bechtel employees and 800 dependents. During our descent, it was announced that due to Kwajalein being a military base, transit passengers would have to stay onboard and photography was strictly forbidden.

 We performed another carrier landing with full reverse and energetic braking on runway 05 at Bucholz Army Airfield at 1230 and turned left for parking on the apron, shutting down engines at 1233 alongside a Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner registered N691AX, with another lurking in the shadows inside a hangar. This time there wasn’t even the pretence of a terminal, just squat military buildings scattered around the edge of the ramp and a gate in a chain link fence through which the disembarking military contractors and family members headed into the base. (But was there, somewhere in there, a United Airlines metal sign to weed out the Global Services from the Premier Access, with Groups 3-4-5 to stand aside?)

 KWAJALEIN to KOSREI

 With the Christmas holidays at an end, I correctly guessed today that disembarking passengers would outnumber those leaving the base, and with a only a handful joining the flight we were half empty but ready to go at 1316 with a planned flight time to Kosrei, our first stop in the Federated States of Micronesia, of an hour and two minutes.

 After backtracking, at 1323 we roared down runway 05 and were on our way, climbing to 32,000 feet for enough time that the cabin crew were able to serve drinks to all onboard. As cups and cans were cleared away, engine power was reduced to idle and we were descending once again, with the mountainous island of Kosrei appearing to our left, fringed by a reef all the way round. We performed a wide circuit and landed with another blare of reverse thrust due east onto runway 09 at 1431 and parked at 1436.

 Despite the substantial breakfast served on the long oceanic leg from Honolulu to Majuro and the fact that I’d only sat in 32A since then, I was ravenously hungry and once inside the small concrete terminal I was relieved to find a local person selling lunch boxes containing a variety of food items. I had lofty visions of enjoying my lunch in the cruise to Pohnpei but as soon as I was back on board I tore into the tasty selection of battered fish, grilled chicken, rice, spices and vegetables. A member of the crew, who had somewhat adopted me by this point, brought me a cold can of soda water to wash it down with, and by the time the engines were whining back to life at 1515 I was finished eating, tray table back in the vertical position.

  KOSREI to POHNPEI

 After rolling forward for a few metres, we held our position inside the parking area for over twenty minutes as the flight deck awaited clearance to be issued by Oakland Center, over three thousand miles distant, so it wasn’t until 1538 we finally launched off runway 05 for our planned fifty-five minute hop over to Pohnpei, the capital of Micronesia and the its most populated island, with 34,000 residents. Another drinks service, another one hour time change off the clock, and soon we were descending with the impressive island of Pohnpei appearing off our left side.

  As we came in for landing on Pohnpei’s runway 09, the aircraft was caught in a gust of wind and instead of settling, we wavered unsteadily, eating up precious tarmac. The handling pilot had no choice but to take action and slammed us down without ceremony. All of our landings on the islands were carrier landings to some extent but this one hammered home the point – on these short runways, its do-or-die. In fact on March 11, 2001, a Boeing 727-223F of Express One International was written off landing at Pohnpei when it hit the ground short of the runway. The pressure to make landfall within the touchdown zone on these short runways is intense, and contributed to Air Mike’s only crash, which was similar to the Express One incident. The Boeing 727-92C registered N18479 was landing in Yap (no longer part of the Island Hopper proper today, but served by United twice a week on a separate offshoot from Guam twice a week en route to Koror Island) and contacted the ground thirteen feet (four metres) short of the runway threshold, ripping off the right main gear and propelling the aircraft off the side of the runway where large pieces of the wreckage still reside, gradually being reclaimed by nature. Both 727 accidents luckily did not claim lives or cause serious injury but go to show that this kind of flying is not without hazard.

 With heavy braking and the aircraft shimmying from side to side, we were quickly down to walking pace, with a few nervous laughs from the passengers. But everyone here knew there was no room to maneouvre, so the atmosphere was free of judgement after what would otherwise be considered a “bad” landing.

 I left the aircraft to have a look inside the terminal, every bit as basic as Majuro and Kosrei, if not more so; there seemed to be some kind of restaurant set up behind tinted glass but I was glad I’d already managed to flag down some lunch at Kosrei, because it didn’t look promising.

 POHNPEI to CHUUK (TRUK)

 As the Island Hopper approached its conclusion, load factor began to rise and when I reboarded, I found myself next to a pair of Americans in suit and tie, unlike most of the passengers who were islanders. Engines started at 1629 and we were off the ground at 1637 for a fifty-nine minute leg across to Chuuk (formerly known as Truk, hence the airport code of TKK). We made another carrier-style landing but this time with smooth touchdown on runway 04 at Chuuk International Airport on the island of Weno, serving a local population of 13,000; the Chuuk population in total numbers around 50,000.

 Because we had gradually fallen behind schedule as the day wore on, it was announced that transit passengers would stay onboard, which in some ways was a relief; I wanted to make the most of the day by planting clogs on concrete at each stop, by now I was pretty tired and had a pretty good idea of what to expect of each airport’s rudimentary passenger facilities. Since the number of people onboard during the ground stop was about half that of the actual seating capacity of the aircraft, everyone was asked to move into the D-E-F seats while A-B-C were cleared of rubbish and checked for security, then everyone was asked to move to the A-B-C side while D-E-F were cleared. The process was a little bit awkward because there is only so much room inside a Boeing 737, but it worked and presumably some time was saved by not letting people leave and come back.

 CHUUK to GUAM

 Passengers boarded until almost every seat was occupied and at 1729 the engines started up once more for the final leg of the Island Hopper (not counting Palau and Manila…) and we were on our way. Because the final leg to Guam was ninety minutes, we had time to get up to 38,000 feet and the crew handed out a surprisingly delicious turkey and cheese sandwich. (All those carrier landings and Space Shuttle launches must work up an appetite because I was hungry again!)

 One of the many things about taking this flight was that it illustrated the incredible reliability of the hardware. Gear goes up, gear goes down. Flaps go up, flaps go down. Spoilers, ailerons, elevators. Engines. All of it worked in perfect harmony to steer the jet with perfect precision in a very hostile environment. Boiling hot and humid on the ground, freezing cold and dry as a bone in the cruise. Racing in low over the surf followed by an abrupt deceleration as soon as the wheels touched the ground. The brakes alone must be a work of art.

  And the crew’s stamina must surely be tested by this very demanding operation. The cabin crew, even though their numbers are boosted by an extra member, work hard for fourteen hours and oversee five en route stops. For the pilots, the first leg from Honolulu to Majuro is relatively straight forward, but the second duty comprising the next five legs, four of which are into very short fields, must be exhausting even if it is within legal crew duty time. If the pilots felt tired, it didn’t show as we came in after dark for a landing on runway 06L at Guam’s Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport.

 After being shoehorned onto short runways all day, whoever was landing at Guam clearly delighted in having so much tarmac to play with – 12,015 feet (3,662 metres), two-and-a-half miles’ worth. A long flare just feet above the ground ended with a smooth touchdown barely perceptible as a rattle through the airframe and we were down for the last time, mission accomplished, at 1855 local time.

 A gate change sent us backtracking through the parking area so it was another ten minutes before we were parked at the gate. I wearily gathered up my belongings for the last time and headed for the forward left door, thanking the crew profusely for their hospitality throughout the long day of transpacific flying.

 Entry formalities at Guam were the same as at any mainland US airport although on the way from the arrival gate we passed a series of movable dividers, with travellers coralled on the other side. I later learned that because all departing passengers clear security on their way airside, and all arriving passengers clear customs regardless of their origin, the terminal was built with a single airside area (which meant arriving passengers could even buy food or merchandise before entering the customs hall), but post-9/11 security procedures mean arriving and departing passengers must be seperated. (In the early days of the new rules, the seperation was achieved using stacked chairs with security staff as ushers.) The makeshift solutions seemed inkeeping with the rather basic passenger facilities and the overall arrival experience, especially after completing formalities, was more akin to Africa or Latin America in the 80s – the facilities not in a particularly impressive state of repait, information booths unmanned and no officials on duty to assist. Eventually I managed to find a traffic cop to flag down a taxi and I was on my way to the off-brand resort hotel I’d booked cheaply for the night.

 I was in bed by 2100 local, partly because I had another early start to catch my United Airlines 777-200 to Tokyo at 0700 the next morning (a non-ER, avgeeks!), and also because I was completely wrecked. That said, I suspect every one of the crew were asleep even before I was. Great work all round United; the Island Hopper not only provides a lifeline to isolated and beautiful tropical islands, it is also an unforgettable aviation experience and if you’re anywhere near the Pacific Ocean on your travels, I hope you can find a way to take this unique flight to paradise.