Day 7. (on the road from Florida to Bangkok, in case you haven’t been paying attention) Now pay attention.
We’ve run into a snag in our plans. Cory, my boss and owner of CB Aviation, (I told you to pay attention) and I have been working with an overflight permit agent from the UK to get prior permission to fly over or land at all the countries in the middle east, India and Asia. I’ve been very surprised at how much more difficult and a pain in the ass these countries are being. When I did almost this exact trip two years ago it was a piece of cake, or at least easier. Now everybody wants 72 hours to get the permit. This is going to cost us a day, because from Corfu we will hit either Egypt of Jordan tomorrow. But since the permits were filed on a Thursday and they don’t work on the weekends we aren’t allowed into either until tomorrow, so we have to stay in Corfu, unless we want to go to Crete and get 2 hours closer to Jordan saving us time when we do go. It was a great idea but our handler told us that Iraklion? is full, no room to park us. So we have to stay in Corfu. Did I mention we get are being forced against our will to stay in Corfu? The life of a ferry pilot it pretty rough sometimes.
Corfu is your classic Greek island paradise. Good food, great weather, and fantastic scenery. I won’t bore you with the details because we were just being lazy pilot/tourists. Late that afternoon I checked my email and got another surprise. India now requires seven working days to get an overflight permission to enter their country from a hostile nation, and seeing India and Pakistan are both aiming nukes at each other I guess that qualifies. Our agent told us that we couldn’t get into India until the 27th! SHIT! I was having fun but I wanted to get the trip done and go home. I sure as hell didn’t want to sit around, somewhere, for four or five days waiting on a damn permit! I went and looked at the map and thought about it. Go can’t go around Pakistan to the north, lots of bad things up there, the Himalayan mountains, Syria, and Iran to name just a few. Over flying Pakistan from Bahrain, or even Fujairah and flying directly to The first airport in India was too far the Navajo wouldn’t make it. There was an airport closer but they only had Avgas for the flying club and would not sell it to transient aircraft for any price, their quote. But then I had an evil plan.
